ON ST. LEOPARDINUS, MONK AND MARTYR, AT ALBINIACUM IN THE BOURBONNAIS,
IN THE 6TH OR 7TH CENTURY.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Leopardinus, monk, M., at Albiniacum in the Bourbonnais. (S.)
BY J. B.
§ I. The Acts of the holy Martyr; in what century he lived.
Long ago in our Work Bolland, on the 17th day of January, where he treats of St. Sulpicius, surnamed the Pious, bishop of Bourges in Gaul, There exist various promised a twofold Life of this Martyr: from which place I understand that a twofold Life of him already existed then in our Manuscripts; both were brought to light at Paris in the year 1657 by Philippe Labbe in volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript books, from page 415, the one, and that the more prolix, from a Manuscript codex of the monastery of Souvigny, partly copied out by Jacques Sirmond, and partly caused by him to be copied out: and the other, briefer than this, from an old Manuscript Lectionary of the abbey of St. Sulpicius of Bourges, which the Reverend Father Bernard Audebert, first the ruler, as Labbe writes, of the same abbey, but afterwards Prior of St. Germain, had lent him. Both, that we may discharge the faith given by our Forefathers, we shall exhibit here, although neither has such commendation, either from its author, anonymous in both cases, or from antiquity, that it can be numbered among the monuments of undoubted credibility. Of a third Life of the holy Martyr, sent from Rouen by Father d'Ardes to our Forefathers, because it seems more recent than the former ones, I say nothing in this place.
[2] And first, as regards the more prolix Life or Passion of St. Leopardinus, Lives of the holy Martyr, although there is nothing by which I may define at what time it was written, yet that it was written many not only years but centuries after the death of the holy Martyr seems able to be made out from more than one head: for first, although the word Archbishop, from which the author of the more prolix Life at number 3 derives the adjective Archiepiscopal, began to be used now and then among the Franks from as early as the 6th century; yet very few, as Mabillon writes in De Re diplomatica, book 2, chapter 2, number 13, attributed that name to themselves before the 46th year of the ninth century, by which, as we shall see below, St. Leopardinus had long since departed to the immortal life. Then the same author, when he had said at number 5: But even after the steadfastness of the holy man Leopardinus had been proved, he (Ardeus, lord of the estate of Vivaris, given to St. Leopardinus) handed over and made over the whole estate of Vivaris itself in its entirety to the same Blessed man, under the testament of laws and charters and under the principal stipulation of kings; at number 8 speaks again in this manner: For among the other farms of that aforesaid allod of Vivaris there was a certain field of good extent, situated in the parish of Albinum, which had come into the proper uses of the altar of St. Symphorian by an ancient sanction of laws; in which last words he calls those laws Ancient, not in comparison with Ardeus, who had himself obtained them in favour of St. Leopardinus, but with his own age, in which he was writing; unless perhaps he is treating of different laws.
[3] but not very ancient, Moreover, in the same number, speaking of the death of Blitildis, who brought death upon St. Leopardinus through her men, he writes thus: For as the Lord cursed the unfruitful fig-tree, so also He is said (to have cursed) this Blitildis; which seem to be the words of one writing not of things which happened either in his own memory or a little before, but which he had learned to have happened long ago. Finally, the same author, unless he had been rather remote from the age of St. Leopardinus, would not so openly be at war with himself, which I shall show more fully below that he does, saying now that St. Leopardinus was the equal in age of St. Porcianus, now that he was younger by nearly a whole century. The composer of the briefer Life likewise falls upon the same rock, while he makes St. Leopardinus the equal in age of Sulpicius the Pious, prelate of Bourges, and at the same time of St. Porcianus, as we shall likewise say below. For the rest, the briefer Life seems nothing but a mere compendium of the former, contracted into fewer words in a less rude style for the convenience of those reciting the divine Office, with very few things added, which, as we shall observe in their place, seem to have been taken nearly from Gregory of Tours, On the Lives of the Fathers, chapter 5, where he treats of St. Portianus the abbot; so that this briefer Life yields to the more prolix in antiquity also; which will become more manifest to one comparing the two with each other: for both keep the same order of events; but the more prolix sets out the particular circumstances of the deeds both more fully and more clearly. So much concerning the age and credibility of the Acts: I come now to the age of St. Leopardinus and to the error common to both Lives, as I said a little before.
[4] which, while they say that he St. Leopardinus lived and flourished in the time of Clotaire, king of the Franks, according to the briefer Life, number 1. The more prolix Life indeed does not mention Clotaire, but says that St. Leopardinus flourished under Theodoric, number 3. Moreover, according to both Lives, there were contemporaries and intimates of the holy Martyr: St. Porcianus, his brother; St. Sulpicius, bishop of Bourges, at one time his comrade and companion; a certain Placidus; Ardeus, his chief patron; and finally Blitildis or Bichildis, the wife of Ardeus, who contrived his death: of these Placidus, Ardeus and Blitildis or Bichildis are, so far as I know, unknown from elsewhere, and therefore unsuited for determining the age of St. Leopardinus. But neither from the age of the kings Clotaire and Theodoric alone can anything certain be determined [ ] king of the Franks, Theodoric reigned in Austrasia from the year 511 until the year 533: and when Clotaire II was king of the Franks, the other Theodoric reigned in Burgundy from the year 596, and in Austrasia from the year 612 until the year 613, according to Labbe's Chronology; so that from the mere mention of Clotaire and Theodoric, whom the Lives distinguish by no mark from the kings of the same name, you would not know whether St. Leopardinus lived under the former or the latter Clotaire and Theodoric. But the Acts seem to remove the doubt, when to the kings Clotaire and Theodoric, contemporaries of St. Leopardinus, they add St. Portianus, the full brother of St. Leopardinus.
[5] For it seems scarcely doubtful that by St. Portianus, the brother of St. Leopardinus, they say is the brother of St. Portianus, the same Portianus is to be understood of whom Gregory of Tours, praised at number 3, speaks. He says that his Portianus was devoted to the divine service from his earliest age, born of servile condition, the slave of a master both difficult and troublesome, and at length a monk and abbot in Auvergne, in the time of king Theodoric. Each of these things fits the Portianus and Leopardinus mentioned in the latter's Acts. That they were brothers, and born in Auvergne, both Lives of St. Leopardinus have, the more prolix toward the end of number 1, the briefer at once in the beginning. And that both brothers bound themselves from boyhood to the service of God, the more prolix Life has at number 2: that both were household slaves of a certain very rich man, and were accustomed again and again to frequent a certain monastery of Auvergne, by whose abbot at length
they were received into the number of the monks, the briefer Life again relates in the beginning. Finally, that Portianus too was abbot of that same monastery in which they had first been tonsured as monks, the more prolix Life indeed insinuates somewhat obscurely at number 4; but the briefer says it expressly at number 2: all and each of which things, if they are compared with what Gregory of Tours writes of his Portianus, will fit excellently into one and the same Portianus. It is true indeed that Gregory does not mention St. Leopardinus, nor intimates in any way that his Portianus had a brother of this name; but at the same time he declares not obscurely that more could have been said of his Portianus than he said. The words with which he closes his brief writing on St. Portianus are of this kind: These things only have we learned of the holy man (perhaps he speaks only of his deeds), not judging others who have learned greater things of him, if they wish to write anything in his praise. Add to these that a St. Portianus in Auvergne different from the one mentioned is hitherto unknown; and you will not hesitate much, I think, to agree with me that the same one is mentioned in both places, both in the Lives of St. Leopardinus and by Gregory of Tours.
[6] Further, the Portianus of whom Gregory of Tours speaks lived under Theodoric, they seem to fix his age to the 6th century; not that one who reigned at the same time as Clotaire II; but that one who was in the time of Clotaire I. That he lived in the time of Theodoric the cited Gregory relates expressly in these words: In those days Theodoric, having entered the territory of Auvergne, was laying everything waste, devastating all things. And when he had pitched camp in the meadows of the village of Arthona *, the aforesaid old man (Portianus the abbot) hastens to meet him, as if to make petition for the people. And that this Theodoric, already king, as Gregory writes a little below, ruled the Franks with Clotaire I, is thus shown from Gregory himself. He relates in book 3 of the History of the Franks, chapters 12 and 13, that Theodoric set Sigivaldus over Auvergne after he had laid it waste, the same, namely, to whom he writes in the Lives of the Fathers that St. Portianus had first gone before he interceded with Theodoric for the people: and in chapter 23 of the same book 3 of the History of the Franks, that he had his son Theodebert or Theudebert as successor in the 23rd year of his reign; all of which fit the Theodoric contemporary with Clotaire I, not the other, contemporary with Clotaire II, who reigned from the year 596 until the year 613, and had a son as successor named Sigebert. Besides, Gregory did not prolong his life to the year 596; and therefore it cannot be understood of the later Theodoric: and the mentioned expedition of the former king Theodoric against the Arverni Le Cointe and others tie to the year 525; whence, since Portianus, from what has been said the brother of St. Leopardinus, was then already an old man according to Gregory, it seems scarcely to be doubted that both brothers flourished in the 6th century, somewhat advanced.
[7] [but to the 7th century, when they make him the equal in age of St. Sulpitius the Pious:] And these things indeed seem thus far to flow of their own accord from the Acts of St. Leopardinus, did they not throw a new knot before the reader when they make St. Leopardinus the equal in age and the comrade of St. Sulpitius, bishop of Bourges. The people of Bourges had two holy bishops of this name, of whom the elder, who died about the year 591, is venerated on the 29th, and the younger on the 17th of January, who died about the year 648, surnamed the Pious, who, it is clear, lived in the time of Clotaire II and of Theodoric, the contemporary of Clotaire II, from his Life written by a contemporary author, volume 2 of January, chapter 2, page 168. That St. Leopardinus adhered for some time as companion to Sulpitius the Pious, already bishop of Bourges, the more prolix Life has in set terms at number 3. And the briefer also indicates the same not obscurely, when at number 1 it calls Sulpitius, bishop of Bourges, Father Pius from the surname proper to him, and says that he lived for some time together with St. Leopardinus in the monastery of Navense, or of St. Symphorian, near Bourges, of which Sulpitius the Pious is reputed the first founder: these things standing, it is necessary that SS. Leopardinus and Portianus flourished in the 7th century; whereas from what has been said before St. Portianus had already in the year 525, or at least some years later, reached old age; nor is it accordingly probable that he reached the 7th century. From which indeed it is clear that both Acts are at war with themselves, as I noted above, and it is moreover brought about that either St. Leopardinus is falsely called the brother of St. Portianus; or he flourished in the 6th century, under Clotaire I and Theodoric, the sons of Clovis the Great, not in the 7th century under Clotaire II and Theodoric, the sons of Chilperic and Childebert: which of the two is to be chosen before the other let us consider.
[8] whence some think that Leopardinus lived in the 7th century, others in the 6th. Chastelain in the Universal Martyrology tied the death of St. Portianus to the year 540, on the 24th day of November: but to St. Leopardinus, on the 7th day of October, broadly, no determinate year being assigned, he ascribed the 7th century in the margin. He seems, therefore, not to have acknowledged St. Leopardinus as the brother of St. Portianus; but on the contrary to have judged that he lived in the time of St. Sulpitius the Pious, bishop of Bourges: so that in his mind the Acts of St. Leopardinus seem to be abandoned where they make St. Leopardinus the brother of St. Portianus, but admitted where they make him the equal in age of St. Sulpitius the Pious, bishop of Bourges. Of the same opinion, although he does not openly declare it, perhaps Mabillon also was: for in the Benedictine Annals at the year 542, number 34, he makes mention of the deeds of St. Porcianus from Gregory of Tours; but of the deeds of St. Leopardinus not even a word; although at the year 1040, number 24, he was not silent concerning St. Leopardinus, whose remains were then raised by Aymo, bishop of Bourges, and concerning the monastery of Vivaris, which had the same Martyr as founder. But Le Cointe in the Annals, both at the year 508, number 28, and at the year 525, number 18, judged that they were brothers, of whom he contends that at least Portianus, who, it is clear from Gregory of Tours, died in old age, survived among the living up to the year 525, to which he ties the expedition of Theodoric, son of Clovis, against the rebel Arverni. Labbe too, in volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 371, and again page 425, affirms that St. Leopardinus was thrust down to the age of Sulpitius the Pious, or to about the year of Christ 630, through unskilfulness in handling chronological matters.
[9] Nor indeed do the authors whom I have just praised seem to think so without reason: It seems more probable for although undoubted monuments do not create belief that Portianus and Leopardinus were brothers, there is nevertheless nothing in the same that you may oppose to their fraternal relationship: and from elsewhere it appears sufficiently certain from Gregory of Tours that St. Portianus died heavy with old age in the sixth century rather than in the 7th: and therefore that the death of St. Leopardinus, who perhaps departed from life before Portianus and was, according to both Acts, his brother, cannot, regard being had to the same Acts, be deferred to the 7th century, already advanced to about the year 30: and if the same Acts besides make St. Leopardinus the equal in age of Sulpitius the Pious, and therefore of Clotaire II and of Theodoric, son of Childebert, I think for more than one cause that they stray from the truth here rather than when they call SS. Portianus and Leopardinus brothers: the first is that Sulpitius the Pious far surpassed most of the other bishops of Bourges of those times in holiness and celebrity of name: and it not rarely happens that many things are attributed to very celebrated men out of mere conjecture, and often falsely, by those writers who commit to letters things far distant from themselves, and that often from the tradition of the common people, corrupted by age.
[10] It could easily have happened, therefore, that St. Leopardinus went to another bishop of Bourges; the authors of the Lives, for Simplicius, who indeed, as bishop of Bourges about the age of Leopardinus, was well known to the Arverni, but with the lapse of time, as happens, began first to be unknown, and at length to be called Sulpicius the Pious, as will be further confirmed from what is soon to be said. But, you will say, if this is so, tell me who was the prelate of Bourges with whom St. Leopardinus is said to have lived for some years. Perhaps Sulpicius I? By no means: for that he bore the infulae of Bourges only from the year 584 is shown by us in volume 2 of January, page 967 and following. Le Cointe thinks that Simplicius should be substituted for Sulpitius; in whose favour is the affinity of the names, by which it not rarely happens that what was to be ascribed to the one is ascribed to the other, and the deeds of different men are confused, of which thing examples are met with everywhere. The reckoning of time also favours it: for that the election of Simplicius as bishop of Bourges was made about the year 472 is proved by the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, volume 2, column 10, who, agreeing with Le Cointe, also add: In the time of St. Simplicius there flourished in the territory of Bourges St. Leopardinus, the brother of St. Portianus, who is held as a martyr. But whoever at length was the bishop of Bourges who was the intimate of Leopardinus, here is the second reason why I think that the Acts which affirm this of Sulpitius the Pious stray from the truth, and perhaps the very origin of the error.
[11] In the suburb of Bourges there is a monastery of the Benedictine Order, substituted Sulpicius, formerly called Navense on account of its place situated between two rivers (the Evra and the Avaricus, commonly the Yèvre and the Auron) and suited for a station of ships, but now St. Sulpitius's. They say it was founded in the time of Clotaire II, and Sulpitius the Pious is believed to have been its first founder and abbot. St. Leopardinus likewise founded the monastery of Vivaris on the borders of the dioceses of Clermont and Bourges. Further, Vivaris has been subject to Navense for many centuries back, as is clear from the instrument of Archembald, prince of the Bourbonnais, to be exhibited more fully below, and related by Mabillon in volume 4 of the Annals at the year 1040, number 24, where among other things these are read: All these being gathered, Aymo the archbishop (of Bourges) made known how Ardeus, a most noble man, by the order and with the approval of king Theodoric, gave the whole allod of Vivaris, which was of his right, to blessed Leopardinus, and to St. Sulpicius, and to the monks serving him. The authors of this instrument judged that the monastery of St. Leopardinus was subject from its very beginning to the monastery of Navense. The same opinion probably was held by those who consigned the Acts of St. Leopardinus to letters; and thence they concluded that both monasteries were founded at about the same time, of which the one had St. Sulpitius, and the other St. Leopardinus as founder; and therefore that both Saints lived at some time together. But why could not the monastery of Vivaris have been made subject to Navense at some time, even though the first had existed nearly a whole century before the second? The 11th century is too remote from the age of St. Leopardinus, even granting that he flourished in the 7th century, for the authors of the cited instrument to deserve undoubted credence in this matter.
[12] and confused kings of the same name, Finally, the third reason on account of which the authors of the Acts of St. Leopardinus, rather when they bring St. Leopardinus down to the age of Sulpitius II, or the Pious, bishop of Bourges,
than when they make SS. Portianus and Leopardinus full brothers, I think strayed from the truth, lies in this, that through unskilfulness in chronology they more probably confused Clotaire II with Clotaire I; and likewise Theodoric, son of Childebert and king of Burgundy, with Theodoric, son of Clovis and king of Austrasia. Into which opinion I am led most of all for this reason, that I see several others to have fallen into this error. At Ambiliacum in the diocese of Bourges St. Dulcardus is venerated on the 25th day of October, as Chastelain has in the Universal Martyrology on that day, assigning him the year 463 in the margin. The Acts of St. Dulcardus have this beginning in Labbe, volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 370: In the time of Clotaire, king of the Franks (whom most interpret falsely and unskilfully, says Labbe, as the II or the younger), there shone forth the memorable confessor Dulcardus etc.: toward the end of his life he was visited by St. Avitus the abbot (namely of Micy, substituted for St. Maximinus I in the year 521, as the authors of the enlarged Gallia Christiana write, volume 8, column 1528), as the same Acts have in Labbe, cited: whom, however, the same writers of Gallia Christiana, volume 2, column 121, drew back to the times of Sulpitius II, bishop of Bourges, in these words: Under St. Sulpitius (surely the second, of whom they had just treated) there also lived St. Dulcardus, who dwelt in the monastery of Ambiliacum.
[13] which is shown to have been done in other cases too; Labbe, after he had noted in the Annotations on the Elogium of St. Dulcardus that his death was wrongly brought back by Claude Robert to the times of Sulpitius the Pious, proceeds thus: Deluded by the same error too, they let down SS. Eusitius, Leopardinus and certain others to the lower times of the same Sulpitius. There were two Childeberts in the 6th century: the one the son of Clovis the Great, whose sister married Amalaric, king of Spain, according to Gregory of Tours, book 3 of the History of the Franks, chapter 1. This Childebert, having moved an army into Spain on account of his sister Crotechildis, ill-treated by him, deprived Amalaric of life through his men, according to the same Gregory, chapter 10, and reigned, according to Labbe, from the year 511 until the year 558 or the following. The other Childebert, son of Sigebert, king of Austrasia, and of Brunhild, obtained his father's kingdom in the year 575, and Gregory, cited, writes in book 6, chapter 42, that he likewise sent an army into Spain: and he died in 596, and although he did not reach the episcopate of Sulpitius the Pious, begun in the year 624, he was nevertheless his contemporary. Further, since Childebert, going away into Spain with an army, is read in Gregory of Tours, book On the Glory of the Confessors, chapter 82, to have gone to Eusitius, who was staying in the territory of Bourges; those whom Labbe reproves in the words cited above interpreted of Childebert II what was said of Childebert I, by an error plainly similar to that by which in the Acts of St. Leopardinus the Clotaires and Theodorics were confused with one another.
[14] This St. Eusitius is venerated on the 27th day of November: but again a plainly similar error, it is shown; by which the elder Clotaire and Theodoric were confused with the younger, was observed in the Commentary on the Life of St. Fidolus, announced indeed at Troyes in Gallic Champagne on the 16th day of May, but an Arvernian by fatherland, volume III of May, page 588, where of certain Acts of St. Fidolus, and of the age of St. Fidolus wrongly drawn back to the 7th century, these things may be read: Other Acts were written some centuries later, by a man not sufficiently skilled in antiquity… Nor are faults lacking, which he confirms from the Deeds of the Franks: in which the war of Theodoric, king of the Burgundians, incited by his grandmother Brunhild, against king Clotaire II is narrated in chapter 37, and he at once referred the captivity of St. Fidolus to the said times: but soon he manifested his ignorance, when he asserts that St. Camelianus, the successor of St. Lupus, was then bishop of Troyes; who flourished nearly a whole century earlier, and took part in the council of Orléans, held in the year of Christ 508 or the following. The author of the former Life, which seems to have been written before the times of the said Theodoric, king of the Burgundians, relates only that he was led away captive under king Theodoric, which we judge to have been done in the year DVII. For "then," as Gregory of Tours writes, book 2 of the History of the Franks, chapter 37, "Alaric having been slain, a very great people of the Arverni and the chief of the senators fell, and Clovis directed his son to the Arverni: who, going, subjugated to his father's dominions those cities from the borders of the Goths as far as the boundary of the Burgundians." As, therefore, the writer of these Acts through ignorance of antiquity confused the Clotaires and Theodorics, and drew St. Fidolus away to another century, so also the author of the Life of St. Leopardinus from the same head confused the same kings too, and more probably determined that St. Portianus with his brother Leopardinus lived nearly a century later than was right.
[15] The Acts of St. Leopardinus, copied out from the Manuscripts of the Abbey of St. Illidius of Clermont and transmitted to us by Dom Geroult, and therefore, whatever is brought forward here to the contrary, a son of the Abbey of St. Sulpicius of Bourges, have an Annotation annexed to them at the end, sought from the Chronicle or History of the same abbey, in which it is contended that St. Leopardinus was not the brother of St. Portianus, but drew in the rudiments of the monastic life in the abbey over which St. Portianus presided, and reached the times of St. Sulpicius, chiefly for these causes: that Gregory of Tours, who died about the year 594, nowhere mentioned St. Leopardinus, not even where he treats of St. Portianus, though he would not otherwise have neglected his fellow-countryman: that it has been undoubted from every age that Leopardinus was instructed in virtue and the monastic life in the monastery of Navense or of St. Sulpicius of Bourges by St. Sulpicius: finally, that from every age likewise the monastery of Vivaris of St. Leopardinus lay subject to the direction of Navense. But Gregory neither wrote everything about Portianus that could have been written of him, as seems able to be gathered from his words recited at number 5, nor wrote of absolutely all the Saints of Auvergne, for otherwise he would not have wrapped in silence St. Fidolus either, of whom at number 14: and that it was undoubted from every age, both that St. Leopardinus was imbued with the precepts of the monastic life by Sulpitius, namely II, and that the monastery of Vivaris lay subject to Navense perpetually and from its very beginning, so that it should no longer be doubted, which is the conclusion of the mentioned Annotation, had to be proved by undoubted testimonies, and perhaps older than the Chronicle of St. Sulpitius of Bourges, whose age we do not know, or than the diploma, written only in the 11th century. And as regards the praised diploma, see what will be said below at number 33 and following.
[16] the age of Leopardinus seems rather to be fixed to the 6th century. Whence indeed St. Leopardinus seems to me to have lived between the year 511 and 533, within which the reign of Theodoric I is bounded: but there is nothing at hand from which I may accurately define the year in which he was either born or died. St. Portianus is customarily inscribed in the Benedictine Calendars; as may be seen in Wion, Ménard and Bucelin on the 24th day of November: Mabillon placed him among the passed-over ones prefixed to the first Benedictine Century: but since St. Maurus came into Gaul only about the year 543, and St. Portianus the abbot seems to have been already an old man from the year 525, from what was said at number 6, he seems by no means to have followed the Benedictine institute, nor accordingly St. Leopardinus, of whom it is not certainly known whether he reached old age and survived Portianus or not. Mabillon indeed does not mention St. Leopardinus as of his Order; Bucelin, however, seems to wish to move something toward ascribing Portianus to his own, from the fact that, as Gregory of Tours writes, he would not take the drink offered him by Sigivaldus outside the time of refection, namely by the prescription, as Bucelin adds, of the most holy Rule; but to win belief he ought to have added and proved that this could have been done by him only by the prescription of the Benedictine Rule, and not out of private piety, by which he forbade himself to take drink before the accustomed prayers had been paid to God.
Annotation* Elsewhere Archonensis.
§ II. The holy Martyr's family, deeds, martyrdom and sacred cult.
Born of servile family, The divine goodness not only exempted St. Leopardinus from servile condition and claimed him for the liberty of the sons of God, which is true liberty, but also willed to raise him to the blessed and immortal glory of His Saints. For both his Lives in Labbe relate that he was born of a servile family in Auvergne, as do also the apographs of him which are kept among our Manuscripts and have already been mentioned above. Auvergne is a province of Gaul which is bounded by the Forez on the East, by the Velay and Gévaudan on the South, by the Bourbonnais tract on the North, and by the Limousin and Périgord on the West; divided into Upper and Lower (they commonly call it the Limagne): in the latter, where it borders the province of the Bourbonnais, there occurs the town of St. Porcianus on the river Sioule, in whose neighbourhood St. Leopardinus seems to have been born: for there in the age of St. Leopardinus was the monastery of Mirandum, which afterwards found its name from St. Porcianus, as did also the town itself by its surname: inasmuch as his Acts relate that St. Leopardinus, vexed by the annoyances of his master, at once took refuge with its abbot. St. Leopardinus was the brother of the aforesaid St. Porcianus, if the Acts are to be stood by; but since the same Acts of St. Leopardinus also make him, not consistently enough, as was shown in the former §, the equal in age of St. Sulpitius the Pious, bishop of Bourges; and it is not altogether clear in what part of the narration the error lies; it cannot be certain either that St. Porcianus and Leopardinus were brothers, although from what has been said this may seem more probable than the other.
[18] However the matter stands, the younger age of St. Leopardinus is indeed so described by his biographers and the slave of a difficult master that it plainly agrees with what Gregory of Tours writes of the younger age of St. Porcianus, chapter 5 of the book On the Lives of the Fathers. He relates of St. Porcianus that his family was servile, his master too difficult and troublesome, his zeal for serving God perpetual from his earliest age, nearly all which things the biographers of the same St. Leopardinus likewise ascribe to him with one mouth, and expressly the briefer biographer at number 1 in these words: He (St. Leopardinus) had a full brother, St. Portianus, whom a certain very rich man possessed as household slaves. When they frequented again and again a certain neighbouring monastery, having conceived the purpose of a higher life, they were tonsured as monks and received by the abbot. Expressly likewise the author of the Manuscript transmitted by Father d'Ardes from Rouen to our Forefathers, who also explains more clearly the manner and occasion by which the holy Brothers were tonsured as monks: but since he took what he narrates of them in this place from Gregory of Tours, let us rather hear the latter speaking. He says thus of Portianus:
The most blessed Portianus, then, from his earliest age strove always to seek the God of heaven, even amid earthly servitude.
[19] For he is said to have been thus the slave of a certain barbarian (that is, he is enrolled among the monks a Frank, as Ruinart interprets), and when he often took refuge at the monastery, that the abbot might give him back to his master excused, at last, when he fled, his master followed on his track, and began to accuse the abbot falsely, reckoning that he himself was seducing him, so that his servant should not serve him. And when, as was his custom, he pressed the abbot with false accusations to give him back, the abbot says to Portianus: What do you wish me to do? And he said: Give me back excused. And when he had been given back excused, and his master wished to lead him home, he was so blinded that he could recognize nothing at all. And seeing that he was afflicted with grievous pains, he calls the abbot, saying: Make supplication, I beg, to the Lord for me, and receive this slave for His service; perhaps I shall merit to recover the light I have lost. Then the abbot says to the Blessed man, having called him: Lay, I beg, your hands upon his eyes. And when he refused, at length, overcome by the abbot's prayers, he placed the sign of the blessed Cross upon his master's eyes: and at once, the darkness being broken and the pain allayed, he was restored to his former health. But thereafter Blessed Portianus, having been made a cleric, was set forward with so great a heap of virtue that, the abbot dying, he himself succeeded. These things Gregory says of Portianus alone, received from slave into monk, without casting in even the least mention of St. Leopardinus: whether St. Leopardinus was the companion and at the same time the sharer of Portianus in these things, as the author of the cited Manuscript says, is altogether doubtful and uncertain, not only on account of the doubtful bond of fraternal relationship between the two Saints, but also because, that being granted, he could have imitated his brother afterwards, and obtained from his master, now softened on account of the recovered use of his eyes, the faculty of entering the monastery.
[20] in the monastery of Mirandum, now of St. Portianus Gregory expressed by name neither the monastery in which Portianus, perhaps with his brother Leopardinus, began to profess as a monk, nor the abbot who perhaps enrolled both among his own: but as regards the monastery, since by the words adduced above he intimates that St. Portianus, in the same monastery, the abbot who had received him being dead, was elected to the office of abbot on account of the excellence of his virtues, it does not seem doubtful that it was that of Mirandum, afterwards called St. Portianus's; which gave its name to the surrounding town, as Ruinart notes on this place of Gregory, and still subsists on the borders of the Arverni toward the Bourbonnais, having lost the title of abbey 800 years ago, reduced to a priory and made subject to the monastery of Tournus. The monks of Tournus having been presented with the secular gown in the year MDCXXVII, the monastery of St. Porcianus remained under regular order, and in the year MDCXLV it was committed to the monks of the congregation of St. Maur to be reformed. Charles the Bald transferred the monastery of St. Portianus to the monks of St. Philibert in the ninth century, as is clear from an instrument of the year 875 among the Monuments of the History of Tournus, by Pierre Juénin, page 93, where among the other possessions of that abbey the cell of St. Portianus is numbered in this manner: And in the county of Auvergne the cell of St. Portianus, with all its appurtenances, which he (Charles the Bald) with his accustomed piety, for the sake of refuge, had conferred on the monks of the holy and undefiled Mother of God Mary, and of St. Philibert, the renowned confessor, to avoid the severity of the Marcomanni; in the year, as Juénin writes, 871.
[21] perhaps by the abbot Protasius. But as regards the abbot who enrolled both Saints, or at least Portianus, in the number of the monks, there are those who think, as the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana relate, volume 2, column 372, that he was called Protasius; him, unless I am mistaken, who, as Gregory of Tours narrates in the Life of the same St. Portianus, fortified St. Portianus with salutary admonitions against the snares and illusions of the demon, who had attacked him under a visible form; whom Chastelain also placed among the Saints whose birthday or day of cult is not known, in the Universal Martyrology, page 885. The words of Gregory are: And this (the deceit of the demon against St. Portianus) was at once revealed to blessed Protasius, who was then held recluse at the monastery of Canbidobrense. Sirmond believed the monastery of Canbidobrense to be the same as that of Mirandum, afterwards called the monastery of St. Portianus; which being granted, it would be probable that Blessed Protasius, having laid down the burden of the abbacy, suggested these salutary admonitions to St. Portianus, then abbot: but Gregory neither writes that these things happened to St. Portianus when already abbot, and he seems to relate, in the words cited at number 19, that he succeeded not a living but a dead abbot, who had enrolled him among the monks. Further, neither was the monastery of Canbidobrense the same as that of Mirandum, as Gregory's own words seem to intimate, speaking of it in such a way that the one seems to have been distant from the other: for otherwise there seems to have been no need of a revelation for Protasius to learn what had happened to St. Portianus: Ruinart thinks the monastery of Canbidobrense was the same, which, a priory commonly called today Combronde, subject to the monastery of Menat of the Order of St. Benedict, is distant about eight leagues from the town and monastery of St. Portianus: so that the name of the abbot of Mirandum by whom St. Portianus, as also perhaps St. Leopardinus, was received among the monks remains in doubt.
[22] That St. Portianus, enrolled among the monks in the monastery of Mirandum, From the monastery of Mirandum shone with an excellent praise of virtue we have Gregory of Tours as witness: the same each of the Manuscript Lives of St. Leopardinus relates of him, in a few words for the most part, but in somewhat more the Rouen Manuscript, chapter 2, whose words, because they contain some singular things, I transcribe here: Having received their liberty, says the author of that Manuscript, they are enrolled among the novices: with what striving of mind they applied themselves to that which is best, how earnestly they drove their minds toward virtue, how finally they approved themselves to all, you may know even from this, that immediately after their profession, the abbot having died, no one was found worthier to succeed than brother Portianus. Who, having taken up the administration of the fold (or monastery), turned to himself the minds and eyes of all by a certain wonderful glory of holiness. There flowed together to him from everywhere those whom any infirm health afflicted, in the hope of recovering health; nor did the outcome deceive their hope. But lest he incur the esteem of the health restored, he poured back the whole praise of this matter upon Leopardinus his brother; for this reason, that he employed him as companion in the prayers (which) he poured forth for the sick. But Leopardinus, by no means thinking more highly of himself, ascribed all the cures to the merits of his brother. Behold St. Portianus celebrated not only for the praise of virtue, but also for the glory of prodigious cures, of which, however, Gregory is silent; behold St. Leopardinus a sharer of the same glory; of which matter the other older Manuscripts are altogether silent. It is deservedly to be feared, therefore, that these things were devised and asserted at will by the more recent author of the Rouen Manuscript.
[23] The same further proceeds thus: He indeed (St. Leopardinus), anxious for himself, he goes to St. Sulpitius, bishop of Bourges, lest he should lie open longer to the importunate darts of cenodoxy (vainglory), decided to avoid the sight of men, and, lest he should undertake anything rashly, to consult Blessed Sulpitius, the fame of whose holiness had spread far and wide. Having therefore communicated the matter with his brother, he came to Bourges and disclosed the cause of his pilgrimage to the holy prelate. That St. Leopardinus, after he had lived for some time with his brother in the monastery, went away to Bourges to St. Sulpitius with the good leave of the same, perhaps by then abbot, the other Manuscripts also have or intimate: but that the cause of this departure was lest vainglory should creep upon him from the prodigious cures which frequently happened through his own and his brother's prayers is nowhere read in them: nay, the briefer Life says that St. Leopardinus went to the bishop of Bourges called forth by the hope of a fuller thing (or of greater perfection). These things, therefore, although perhaps not falsely asserted, yet have no credibility and authority. Whether St. Leopardinus went to St. Sulpitius, surnamed the Pious, although each of the Manuscripts which are in our keeping agrees in this, is likewise uncertain; nay, it was shown in the former § that they are at war with themselves in this matter, so that it is not necessary to repeat here what was said there.
[24] St. Leopardinus, having already lived for some time (for the Acts do not express the duration of his stay at Bourges) with the bishop of Bourges, departing then from him whether this was St. Simplicius or St. Sulpitius or anyone else, and being well instructed in every kind of virtue, conceived the desire of the solitary life: yet in such a way that he resolved to fix his seat and pass the rest of his life nowhere but within the bounds of the diocese of Bourges: the bishop, complying with the holy Man's wish, gave him leave to go away whither he would, and, imparting his blessing, dismissed him. So, nearly, the more prolix Acts of St. Leopardinus: but the briefer ones and the Rouen Manuscript add that St. Sulpitius predicted to Leopardinus as he departed not only the happy outcome of his purpose but also martyrdom, which I think were said rather from the mind and opinion of the authors than from proved monuments or certain authors. Having departed from St. Sulpitius (as the Acts indeed speak), he revisited his brother Portianus, and informed him of his purpose. Portianus indeed approved it, but asked that this should be granted him, that he should not go too far away from him. The fraternal petition pleased Leopardinus: wherefore he decided to fix his seat at Albiniacum: and Albiniacum, in French Aubigny, is a village in the Bourbonnais territory under the diocese of Bourges, situated on the borders of this diocese and that of Clermont.
[25] he founds the monastery of Vivaris by the munificence of Ardeus: There was in the village of Albiniacum a certain estate called Vivaris, and in it an oratory built to St. Symphorian: St. Leopardinus, judging this place not unsuitable for leading the solitary life there, prayed its lord, named Ardeus, that he might be permitted to pay the accustomed praises to God in that oratory; which Ardeus not only willingly granted him, but also gave him the oratory of St. Symphorian and the estate of Vivaris, as may be seen more fully in the Acts. St. Leopardinus made what had been given him subject to the bishop of Bourges (Sulpitius the Pious, as the Acts say, but perhaps Simplicius, or any other), and in that place built a cell, which, the number of his companions increasing, turned out a monastery, which was formerly made subject to the abbey of Navense, or of St. Sulpitius of Bourges, of the Benedictine Order; but at what time this was first done is plainly uncertain: for perhaps after the times of St. Leopardinus it was made subject to the monastery of Navense by the favour of some prince toward the monks of St. Sulpitius; although from the 11th century it was believed to have been subject to St. Sulpitius the Pious from its origin; because the beginning of that subjection was already then unknown. However that may be, receive from Mabillon, at the year 1040, number 24, this brief notice of the monastery of Vivaris: This cell of St. Leopardinus, he says, situated two leagues from Bourbon-l'Archambault (in French Bourbon l'Archembauld), is subject up to now to St. Sulpitius (of Bourges), sacred originally to St. Symphorian, and then also to St. Leopardinus.
[26] he applies himself here to virtue and to his affairs, Concerning the things by St. Leopardinus in Vivaris
his monastery the writers of his Life recorded few things done; although it is by no means to be doubted that, as he had given himself to virtue and the divine service from his tender years, he also trod the path of justice and piety most constantly through every age: here and there, however, some things occur in his Acts by which the holy Man's not sluggish ardour in defending the rights of the church of St. Symphorian, whose administration and care he had taken up; the excellent piety by which it was customary for him to occupy himself daily with divine things; the notable charity which he had toward his neighbour, and the great desire of suffering for God's cause, are commended; as will become manifest to one who turns over his Acts. Nor do I doubt at all that more things, and those illustrious, could have been said and written of St. Leopardinus, had he only found writers nearer to his own age, and had the length of time not spread darkness over his deeds. But let it suffice to have said these things in passing, and let us hasten to his martyrdom, which is nevertheless described accurately enough, from which we shall take only the chief heads, leaving the rest to be read by the reader in his Acts, to be printed below.
[27] St. Leopardinus cultivated according to his strength the estate of Vivaris, given to him liberally and piously by Ardeus, but by order of Blitildis, the wife of Ardeus, that from it he might procure necessaries for the oratory of St. Symphorian, for himself and for his own: and indeed the fruit answered equal to the labour. But the same estate which supplied the holy Man with his living in a manner also procured his death. Blitildis, or Bichildis, the wife of Ardeus, had, you see, taken ill her husband's munificence toward St. Leopardinus: wherefore, driven by the goads of envy, the avaricious woman laid violent hands upon a certain field assigned to the altar of the church of St. Symphorian, Ardeus being unaware or perhaps abroad: admonished again and again by Leopardinus, who reclaimed it, not to retain another's property any longer, nor to provoke the vengeance of St. Symphorian against herself, she did not amend her crime but increased it with a more atrocious crime: for, having conceived the purpose of removing St. Leopardinus from their midst, she first corrupts a certain Placidus, whom the holy Man maintained in the monastery (for in this sense I think he is called in the Acts the nursling of St. Leopardinus) and held as an intimate; by whom being at length informed that St. Leopardinus was going to a certain monastery, near Vivaris, as appears, called Collobero, for the sake of visiting the brethren living there, she at once sends four assassins, to kill the holy Man on his going or returning, and secretly to hide the body of the slain man where it could not be found: these, attacking him as he returned, beat him most cruelly, and, an axe having been driven into his head, leave him as dead, divine Providence, you see, so disposing.
[28] Somewhat otherwise than the Labbe Acts of St. Leopardinus the author of the Rouen Manuscript narrates these things, chapter 5. by assassins Hardeus had, he says, a most ferocious wife, into whose bosom tenacious avarice had poured itself whole: it grieved her that such joyful and well-tilled broad estates should be possessed by men of no account (as she said). The sedulous care of Leopardinus, and the industry of the brethren whom he ruled, which they applied in turning the earth, increased the sickness of her mind. The fruit, equal to the work, did not lessen her grief. She devises, therefore, a means by which to keep the monks from their possession. She first commands certain gluttons, whose audacity she used for crimes, to plunder the whole inheritance; then at length to pluck the crops before they were perfectly ripe, and turn them to profane uses. And when she sees that these things have not succeeded according to her mind, she turns to worse counsels. There was some pseudo-hermit or other, whose counsels and help Leopardinus used familiarly. His name was Placidus, a man born for every wickedness etc. That that field was turned to her own uses by Blitildis the Labbe Acts, older than the Rouen ones, indeed have; but they have nothing of her plunderings of it, nothing of crops cut down not yet ripe; whence these things perhaps proceeded from the sole fancy of the more recent writer, although perhaps true. But neither is Placidus, the betrayer of St. Leopardinus, said in them to have been a hermit, or of St. Leopardinus's counsel; on the contrary he seems to have been of the number of the servants, inasmuch as St. Leopardinus, when about to set out for the neighbouring monastery, ordered him to saddle the horse, and only the name of nursling is given him in the more prolix Labbe Acts, which consult at number 9. Now let us see what further befell St. Leopardinus.
[29] The assassins having not yet returned to their mistress, St. Leopardinus had already then recovered from his wounds by divine help: returning from the Nivernais to his own, he is beheaded. but Blitildis decided to await another time for destroying St. Leopardinus: and not long after she heard that he was planning an excursion into the territory of Nevers to a certain Matron whom he had freed from paralysis by his prayers. She ordered the assassins to beset a place convenient for carrying out the crime beside the bank of the river Allier, where it passes through the borders of the Bourbonnais and the Nivernais. And when St. Leopardinus had now returned thither, they suddenly rushed upon him, and, his head being cut off, took him from among the living, casting the body of the slain man into a very deep pit, lest it should betray the crime: but what the earth covered a light divinely kindled, seen in that place, betrayed to shepherds. The report of the matter, spread abroad among the common people, terrified Blitildis: wherefore she at once sent assassins to dig up the body, enclose it in a cask together with stones, and sink it in the depths of the aforesaid river. But, again detected by various prodigies, which the Acts describe at length, and found entire, only a purple circular line being left on the neck, to indicate the kind of martyrdom, it was at length carried with a very great multitude of people running together and with notable honour to the church of St. Symphorian and committed to burial. But Blitildis, in punishment for the slaughter committed, her bowels being poured out into a privy, perished miserably. And these indeed are the things which I have found narrated of St. Leopardinus: it remains that we say a few things of the sacred Calendars in which he is inscribed, and of the cult paid to the holy Martyr.
[30] The sacred cult of the holy Martyr The Franco-Gallic Hagiology of Labbe, culled from the ancient Martyrology of the abbey of St. Lawrence of Bourges, has thus on the 7th day of October: In the territory of Bourges, in the monastery of Vivaris, the birthday of St. Leopardinus, priest and martyr. The Universal Martyrology of Chastelain in French: Near Albiniacum, among the Bituriges, St. Leopardinus, monk, slain by assassins. I have not hitherto found more Martyrologies than these which mention St. Leopardinus. That the holy Martyr is venerated by the people of Vivaris as patron is clear from the words of Mabillon adduced at number 25: whence also that monastery is sometimes reputed St. Leopardinus's; by which name it is called in the Acts of the Visitation of the diocese of Bourges instituted in the year 1285 by Simon de Beaulieu, archbishop of Bourges, in Baluze, book 4 of the Miscellanies, page 392. To the Acts of St. Leopardinus transmitted to us by Dom Geroult, monk of the abbey of St. Sulpitius of Bourges, is subjoined a Prayer of this kind, doubtless customarily recited in his honour: We beseech Thy Majesty, O Lord, with humble prayer, that all who seek the patronage of Leopardinus, Thy most blessed priest and martyr, may by his most sacred prayers merit to obtain pardon of all their offences. Through Christ our Lord etc. In the codex of Benefices of the diocese of Bourges, printed at Paris in the year 1626, I find a village called St. Leopardinus's, page 13, in the archpriestship of the Bourbonnais; as also in Blaeu in the Geographical Map of the duchy of Bourges; but in the Map of the Bourbonnais it is corruptly called S. Labardin. In both, however, it is placed in the neighbourhood of Albiniacum, not far from the Elaver (in French l'Allier).
[31] and the elevation of his body. To the cult of our Saint also contributes what is read of Aymo, bishop of Bourges, in the Patriarchate of Bourges in Labbe, volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 87, in these words: The fifty-eighth to preside was the lord Aymo, lofty among the others in dignity of birth and illustrious for holiness of life. His brother was called Archimbaldus, a most vigorous prince and count of the Bourbonnais; at whose instance the same venerable pontiff exhumed the body of St. Leopardinus the martyr at the monastery of Vivaris, and placed it more becomingly in a more eminent place of the church of the said monastery. Mabillon also mentions the elevation of the same body of St. Leopardinus, as I noted above, in the Benedictine Annals at the year 1040, number 24, as also the munificence of count Archembald toward the priory of St. Leopardinus of Vivaris shown on that occasion, from an instrument which, as it exists in Mabillon, I transfer here: It runs thus: Henry, most pious of the Franks, directing the helm of the empire, Aymo, brother of the prince Archembald, presiding in the archbishopric of the city of Bourges, the metropolitan city, and the abbot Humbert ruling the abbey of St. Sulpicius, and the monk Andrew disposing the priory of Vivaris, the aforesaid prince Archembald himself and all the nobles of the Bourbonnais are known to have gathered at the most holy monastery of Leopardinus, namely for the sake of raising from the bosom of the earth the body of the kindly Leopardinus, and placing it more honourably.
[32] All these being gathered, Aymo the archbishop made known from a charter of the 11th century, how Ardeus, a most noble man, by the order and with the approval of king Theodoric, gave the whole allod of Vivaris, which was of his right, to blessed Leopardinus, and to St. Sulpicius, and to the monks serving him. Which aforesaid prince Archembald gave and granted very many gifts from his own property to the monks of St. Leopardinus, which it has not irked, but rather pleased, to insert here sedulously. First, the kindly prince Archembald himself granted, Arnulf and Giraldus, prince of La Ferté, approving, to the Lord and to St. Leopardinus an annual fair (market) of that place, and all the fair-dues from all men coming to the fair, the whole jurisdiction in the fair itself. And after many things, says Mabillon, the prince orders that this land "should always remain quiet, as in the authentic precepts of the kings of the Franks all the land of St. Sulpicius is ordered to be quiet," that is, as Mabillon interprets, immune. To this letter, Mabillon proceeds, are affixed the signs of the prince, and of his son Arnulf, and of Gilbert his brother, and of others. Then he relates a clause of the letter of this kind: Done on the feast of St. Leopardinus, Henry being king of the Franks. Finally he also relates these words of the diploma of Arnulf, prince of La Ferté, by which the aforesaid things are confirmed: the whole vicariate, both in the borough and outside the borough, in the land of St. Leopardinus, as Archembald, prince of the Bourbonnais, and Arnulf my grandfather and Gislebert his brother (mentioned above) gave the aforesaid vicariate at the elevation of blessed Leopardinus to the monks serving the Lord there. Done in the reign of Philip, king of the Franks.
[33] Whence it is sufficiently clear that St. Leopardinus was venerated anciently among the people of the Bourbonnais; into which some things but not likewise, as was said above, that Ardeus and St. Leopardinus lived in the age of St. Sulpitius the Pious, so that the monastery of Vivaris could have been made subject to the said holy bishop from its very beginning, on account of the too great distance of the 11th century from the sixth or seventh century. Because, however, this opinion does not seem to have been newly born even then, its antiquity brought it about that at the beginning of the Commentary I thought the age of St. Leopardinus should be tied with a disjunction to the sixth or seventh century, because there are not lacking sufficiently probable reasons for which it may be believed that that opinion, although ancient, drew its origin from the confusion of the Clotaires and Theodorics, kings of France. And this indeed I think the more probable for this reason, that this very instrument is not free from the suspicion of error: for it is said in it that Ardeus gave the estate of Vivaris to St. Sulpitius and the monastery of Navense by Order
and with the approval of king Theodoric, namely of Burgundy, as they will have it. And yet, as the editors of the enlarged Gallia Christiana write, volume 2, column 126, the monastery of Navense is said to have been founded only under Clotaire II; under Clotaire, I say, who obtained the rule of all France in the year 614 after the death of Theodoric, king of Burgundy: for otherwise it would be said to have been founded not under Clotaire but under Theodoric.
[34] are observed here. Moreover, if credence is to be had in the Acts of St. Leopardinus, he willed the monastery of Vivaris to be subject to St. Sulpitius when he had already been made bishop of Bourges; but that this did not happen before Theodoric had departed from among the living and Clotaire had already begun to rule all France will become manifest to one reading his Acts, written by a contemporary author, volume 2 of January, page 168 and following: therefore Theodoric could not have confirmed the monastery of Vivaris with royal authority to St. Sulpitius, already bishop of Bourges. But if you say that St. Leopardinus made his monastery subject to St. Sulpitius, not yet indeed bishop of Bourges, but abbot of the monastery of Navense; I answer that this is likewise very uncertain. St. Austregisilus joined St. Sulpitius to the clergy, as the biographer of St. Sulpitius writes: And when the report, suddenly spread far and wide, had flown about, travelling especially in the part which is placed under the Western sky, Austregisilus, bishop of the city of Bourges, asked prince Theodoric that leave might be given him to hand over to him (Sulpitius) a share of teaching in the church, because multitudes were flying to him for the sake of his doctrine. Nor was there delay: the royal authority is conveyed that, his hair being cut, he should take up the burden of the clerical state, and, advancing him through the succeeding grades above the rest for a year and more, having obtained the Levitical lot, he ministered to the church. And Austregisilus was made bishop of Bourges in the year 612, as may be seen in the Commentary preliminary to his Life, volume V of May, on the 20th day of that month, number 3. And in the following year Theodoric died: and from no head is it clear that St. Sulpitius discharged the office of abbot in the monastery of Navense in the year 612 or the next following. According to the author of the Life of St. Sulpitius, he was enrolled among the clerics by Austregisilus while Theodoric was still living, and, advancing him through the succeeding grades above the rest for a year and more, having obtained the Levitical lot, he ministered to the church. Not before the year 613, therefore, was he initiated into the priesthood: and thence he was summoned into the camp of Clotaire to act as abbot; and so he seems to have embraced the Institute of the monks only under Clotaire. Meanwhile he was more and more girt with the grace of signs. And when it had been urged upon prince Clotaire by the faithful, he at once asks the bishop (Austregisilus) that, for his own safety and that of his army, leave might be given that the blessed man (St. Sulpitius) should hold the office of abbot in his camp, the same writer of the Life of St. Sulpitius proceeds. I know indeed that these things are contrary to the author of the Life of St. Austregisilus, who was the predecessor of Sulpitius II, likewise written by a contemporary author (See volume V of May, page 231, number 10); but in this matter assent seems rather to be given to him who of set purpose pursues the deeds of Sulpitius himself, as is said in volume 2 of January, page 167, number 16 of the Commentary preliminary to the Life of St. Sulpitius.
ACTS OF ST. LEOPARDINUS, MONK,
From a Manuscript codex of the monastery of Souvigny, printed in Philippe Labbe, volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript Books, from page 415.
Leopardinus, monk, M., at Albiniacum in the Bourbonnais. (S.) BHL Number: 4882
By an anonymous author.
CHAPTER I.
The life and martyrdom of the holy Martyr are related.
SS. Porcianus and Leopardinus, brothers, The Wisdom of God the Father, which reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly a, makes that banquet of heavenly fullness b shine with many and innumerable splendours of the Saints. Who, although they are separated in divers places of the earth, yet in that unity of the supreme Trinity, on account of the testament of the Lord and the paternal laws, remain in the love of brotherhood, and so one spirit holds them always, and one faith. Such a union of praiseworthy unanimity, then, that spirit of truth and unity perfects, which those always anxiously keep in the bond of peace for whom one body and one spirit is made in the one hope of the eternal calling, by whom one Lord is known, one faith is worshipped, one baptism is held. For to them there is one God and father of all, who presides above all and through all and in all. This c royal way of truth and salvation, then, the most blessed and true worshippers of God, Porcianus d and Leopardinus, ran with firm and free course. For these, joined by the carnal nearness of brotherhood, each laboured willingly lest at the end of their days they should lose the salutary fruits of their labours.
[2] For these, the most blessed Porcianus and Leopardinus, were born and begotten in the Arvernian fatherland, and born in Auvergne; and the times of their boyhood were rendered tempered e with a certain old-man's gravity of a riper age, and they sanctified the growing number of their days with daily increments of virtues, cleaving to the Lord Jesus with full faith, and constant hope, and the perfect sweetness of charity. For not only did the broad and spacious extent of the Arvernian fatherland catch from them the example of betterment and amendment, but also many and innumerable peoples came from other very distant regions at the report of their praise, which they proclaimed, when they were returning home, to be greater and more praiseworthy than they had heard. For as many and innumerable faithful of the Lord made progress toward obtaining the gift of eternal happiness, coming they came with exultation, carrying back the sheaves f of heavenly regeneration g with the greatest praise.
[3] they lead a holy life together for some time: While the blessed Porcianus and Leopardinus, beloved of God, were labouring together in such a pursuit of praises, at length it pleased the mind of blessed Leopardinus to obey that Dominical precept: "Go out from thy land and from thy kindred h." For this blessed Leopardinus went out from his land and from his kindred, namely the Arvernian, who in the land of the obedience shown merited to receive that gift of the ancient blessing in which it is said: "Blessing I will bless thee and will multiply thee i." For hearing by the daily certainty of a truthful report that in the time of king Theodoric k the blessed and great Sulpicius, the ornament of all religion, Pius l by name of praise, presided at Bourges in the archiepiscopal see, he took the way of coming to him m with devout heart: and finding him after some days, he was received by him with great love, and having stayed with him for some time, he was joined with him in unspeakable familiarity of mind. In this very resolve of mutual love that holy Sulpicius, an eminent pillar of piety and mercy, remains, and that holy Leopardinus, a happy stranger. They continued day and night in the service of God, pleasing by this the heavenly mastership. And one day St. Leopardinus opened the desire of his heart to the holy father Sulpitius, indicating to him that he never wished to choose a dwelling outside the boundary of his episcopate, or to remain anywhere else; wherefore let a place be given him within its confines where he could serve almighty God securely and confidently.
[4] then Leopardinus goes to St. Sulpitius, from whom, having returned to Portianus, The reverend St. Sulpitius, recognizing his most holy probity, a worthy memorial of the age, said to him: Go, and, wherever you will to dwell within the boundary of our episcopate, remain secure, and live consoled by heavenly help n. And having received the leave of the paternal blessing, he returned home to that aforesaid Portianus: to whom he was joined not only by spiritual but also by carnal love and brotherhood o: to whom he disclosed both the ways of his journey and the causes of his prosperity, and intimated what sort and how great an advocate of his soul and body he had found in blessed Sulpitius [p], and showed how the same aforesaid pontiff had permitted him to dwell in his episcopate. Which blessed Portianus, rejoicing together in the prosperity of his brother Leopardinus, rendered thanks to almighty God, both because after some spaces of days he had received him back with the greatest eagerness, and because leave had been given him to dwell wherever it pleased him in the fatherland of Bourges, whence the same blessed Porcianus persuaded his brother Leopardinus with many prayers not to choose the seat of a station far removed from him, but such that each could see the other close at hand.
[5] he is presented with the estate of Vivaris by Ardeus, To this heartfelt prayer of fraternal persuasion the holy man Leopardinus gave assent, and sought in the Bourbonnais village [q] a very suitable and delightful place, Vivaris [r] by name: which estate belonged to a certain prince, named Ardeus, worthy of much reverence both according to God and according to the world. He humbled the nobility of his great power under the hand of almighty God. Whence it most faithfully pleased any of the Christians to seek the hand of his consolation with well-pleased mind. And the holy man of God Leopardinus, hearing from various persons [s] that the aforesaid estate was of the power of Ardeus himself [t], went to him as a suppliant, and besought him that it might be permitted him to pay to the Lord the canticle of daily praise in the oratory which was consecrated in honour of God and of St. Symphorian [u]. Which petition, receiving it kindly, as he was kind, he not only consented to what was asked; but also, after the steadfastness of the holy man Leopardinus had been proved, handed over and made over to the same Blessed man the whole estate of Vivaris itself in its entirety, under the testament of laws and charters, and under the principal stipulation of kings.
[6] And the gift of that estate the same most blessed Leopardinus made over to his most holy advocate after God, Sulpitius [x], [which he makes subject to Sulpitius and makes illustrious by his own and his men's virtues.] who likewise commended the aforesaid estate to the blessed Man by episcopal authority, and permitted him, exhorted and honoured, to return home to that place of Vivaris: where the same most blessed man Leopardinus afterwards served almighty God freely and confidently with certain brethren, and brought many sweats for the love of God to a salutary effect. And he was sedulously devoted to the pursuits of divine works, watching in prayer, toiling in acts of mercy, not unmindful of the Evangelical admonition by which one is commanded first to seek the kingdom of God and the justice of God [y]; he offered daily victims to Christ God with the mortification of the flesh and of sin, and did not contradict Him in deed, because he remained dead to the world and the age; for that his justice might remain for ever and ever, he remained a cheerful distributor and giver of his necessaries to the poor, widows and orphans. Advancing through these increments of virtues and growing by the mercy of God, he made the good fame of his praise flash round about the lands, and gladdened in all things that most faithful friend of his, the aforesaid Ardeus.
[7] Whence, ever honoured by the same Ardeus with great benefits, the blessed man Leopardinus, counted worthy also of every cult of honour, was held admirable by the same man chiefly from this, Enriched with goods by Ardeus, that in return for the quantity of honour offered him he humbled himself in all things, and according to the Psalmist cried that he was wretched and empty, saying: "But I am a beggar and poor [z]." His indeed
keeping the medicine of holy Scripture, and as it were smearing on himself a certain antidote, in which it is said: The greater thou art, humble thyself in all things, and thou shalt find grace before the Lord God [aa]. For the same blessed man Leopardinus held great grace from the Lord God almighty, who through the contests of justice merited at the end of his days to receive from the hand of the Lord the crown of unfading glory [bb]. For this blessed man Leopardinus exercised himself inwardly in the aforesaid allod of Vivaris, which was of his right, and laboured outwardly, that the necessaries of living should not be lacking to the brethren who served Christ the Lord in the same place. For he repeated daily in his mind that Apostolic precept in which it is said: He who does not work, let him not eat [cc]. And that Prophetic promise also claimed his faith, that he should eat the labours of his hands [dd], from which, inebriated in eternal fullness, and brought up upon the water of refreshment, he should be blessed, and it should grow well with him for ever.
[8] For among the other farms of that aforesaid allod of Vivaris there was a certain field of good extent, situated in the parish of Albinum [ee], he incurs the envy of this man's wife, which had come into the proper uses of the altar of St. Symphorian by an ancient sanction of laws. While the Man of the Lord cultivated this with the greatest cultivation, and, in recompense of just labour, labour laid upon labour was multiplied to the wished-for supplies, a certain woman, the most wretched of the wretched, inflamed by the goads of envy, named Blitildis, forgetful of justice, presumes to count it for her own uses. The man of the Lord Leopardinus often admonished her that she ought to cease from the perversity of her presumption, lest she should provoke St. Symphorian to the incitement of his injuries, while she took from him the allod of his inheritance; but the assiduity of the holy Man's exhortation and entreaty, despised, generated in the end increased punishments for the same Blitildis. For as the Lord cursed the unfruitful fig-tree, so also, it is said, St. Leopardinus cursed this Blitildis [ff].
[9] by whose order The same Blitildis, then, remaining in the knots of her wickednesses, afterwards began to search out secretly how she could destroy the blessed man Leopardinus. For she did not dare to do this openly, either for fear of her husband Ardeus, whose wife she was, or for the excessive love of others by which the same Man of the Lord was bound. Whence, infected with the ancient curse of Jezebel, she once * infected by the instigation of her deceit even the holy Man's nursling himself [gg], Placidus by name, very contrary to his name, who for the space of some days, hiding in his heart the poison of the evil demand, the tares, searched out for the holy man Leopardinus snares as much more grievous as they were more hidden; so far, namely, that, complying in all things with Blitildis, the persuader [hh] of malice, he gave his assent in everything, and would destroy that dove of simplicity and innocence, namely St. Leopardinus. For one day, after the solemnities of Masses had been performed, which was the daily custom of the holy man Leopardinus, he commanded the same aforesaid Placidus that a horse should be prepared for him, by which he could more swiftly visit the brethren at the church of Collobero [ii]. He, his heart infected with malice, obeys indeed the precept of the holy Man; but he also approaches more quickly that lover of wickednesses, Blitildis, intimates his movement and road, announces that the sought-for fortune of her wish is at hand, by which she will be able to destroy the holy man of God Leopardinus, if she does not neglect to be watchful over that work. That crafty nursling also adds a covenant of great falsehood [kk], that there was at the church of St. Symphorian a quantity of much money, which would come into her share if the same Man should have the last day of his life. By such a messenger of evil persuasion, then, the mind of Blitildis at once takes fire; she devises a contrivance for accomplishing the wickedness, which that thousand-formed artificer prepares for her, who many times transfigures himself into an angel of light.
[10] he is afflicted with many wounds on the road by assassins, Finally the same Blitildis summons four under-servants of her evil discipleship, and lays bare to them the rust of her mind, conceived and long chewed over, promising them that if they made away with him by carrying out her orders, they would no longer remain in the place of little slaves but in the number of dear sons. In the present, however, they should receive a numerous quantity of moneys, that they might not disdain the work of the entreating mistress, and that they might hasten to carry out her orders more swiftly, it is intimated; and the hour of his movement is intimated to them, that he would shortly pass by the lake which was called Salgorus [ll]. After the passage of his road is intimated, she commands them to seize the Man of God as he passed by, and to deliver him to death most speedily, and to put away the bones too of the body, dead beforehand, so deep in the earth that they could never be found. They take up the tearful precepts of their mistress, and seize the road to the appointed place in haste. And the holy priest of God Leopardinus passed by thence, about to visit the brethren at Collobero in the grace of charity, as has been said. Returning thence one day, and seeing that the aforesaid ministers had fallen asleep near the place of his road, he passed by, and in one of the nearby places waited to see what they wished to do. But rising from sleep, when they learned that the holy man of God Leopardinus had returned, remaining in lamentations and griefs, and complaining much over the torpor of their sleepiness and sloth, they were affected with the grief of irrecoverable consolation. Though indeed the Saint of God, returning, could have held them in derision for their sloth, yet the holy man of the Lord Leopardinus, grieving at the raving of the madmen which he heard, and thirsting for the crown of martyrdom, and approaching them, rendered for himself that answer of the Lord's Passion, saying: "I am he whom you seek [mm]." Then the ministers of the commanded destruction afflict the Saint of God with the punishment of a most bitter beating. They drive an axe too into his head, and thus, namely, leave him as dead.
[11] After the workshop, then, of so great an impiety had been carried through, while they are returning joyful to Blitildis their mistress, from which he prodigiously recovers: they see the holy man of the Lord Leopardinus, healed by a heavenly antidote, following them * from afar, crying out the praises of the Lord, having a cheerful and angelic countenance. And when, full of guile and filled with deceit, they tried again with all their strivings to return to the Priest of God, to slay him with the unspeakable sword, so great a fear and trembling suddenly invaded their minds that none of them dared to look upon him; but taking to flight one after another, uncertain and fugitive, they ran hither and thither through the woods and the hollows of the mountains. At length, wearied and torn in body and garment, they stand in the sight of their mistress. To whom they disclose how they had left the holy man of God Leopardinus dead after many scourgings of his body, his hands and feet bound, his head struck grievously with an axe; and how he had terrified them, and compelled them for their terror to take flight. Having heard these things, that malevolent Blitildis, turned to anger, commands them to be tortured with divers scourges. But amid the scourges they promise to satisfy the lordly will [nn] shortly enough, if a place and time were given them where they could find St. Leopardinus again. Attesting to this shameful promise, that they would make the search, they are dismissed, and thereafter they contrive the causes of a craftier snare for the deceiving of the holy man Leopardinus. But the power and wisdom of almighty God, while such things were being done, exalted blessed Leopardinus in the territory of Nevers [oo] with the greatest grace of celebrity.
[12] There was a certain matron in the same territory of Nevers, but then, summoned by a matron of the Nivernais, abounding enough in number of powerful dignity, and for many spaces of days, having lost the function of all her members, she could declare a part of her faith and of her necessities by the little portion of her tongue alone. She admonished the servants of her house with earnest prayer that they should seek across the river Allier [pp] a certain Man of excellent holiness, named Leopardinus, who for Christ had been afflicted with many punishments, for which he was to receive at the end of his days the crown of perpetuity. She describes to them also the quality of his perfect and well-fitted body, and his countenance, with white hair of the head, cheerful and angelic: his manners too, distinguished by the fullness of all religion, holiness and piety. Yet she asserted that she had never seen him, or learned anything of him from men; but that Spirit of the Lord, who breathes where He will [qq], intimates to her to seek such a Man for her health: the wished-for person of exquisite piety and religion is found, and the supreme necessity of the entreating and sending mistress is disclosed. Which entreaty the holy Man, both for the sake of masterful humility, did not take up presumptuously; and yet, overcome by the sweetness of the piety inborn in him, he did not put it off long. He orders the messengers to return to their mistress, and promises that he will follow at once shortly; meanwhile the renowned man, prepared , wages war at the accustomed solemnities of Masses, and amid the joys of the sacrificed Redemption the long-desired health came to that woman, dead beforehand.
[13] having foretold his death. Thereafter, the mystery of the offered sacrifice being completed, he gave peace and a last Farewell to his brethren and the other faithful, and, taught by the spirit of God, made known that the course of his agony and the end of his life were approaching, saying: The end of my life approaches me, because, behold, I grieve that that nursling of ours, Placidus by name, has been suborned [rr] by the crafty invective of Blitildis: consecrating the beginning of his ways with the fruit of good hope, forgetful of fruitful discipline, forgetful of moderate reverence, he awaits the end of his days hereafter groaning and howling, as indeed he seeks out many windings of argument over the occasion of our destruction. After commending his sons to God and to His Spirit, then, after ordering the necessaries of the monastery of Vivaris, after the manner of his passion had been announced, he came to the aforesaid woman in the territory of Nevers. Her, by the mercy of the pitying God, he found rejoicing over the vows of the safety and health obtained, and fortifying her with the viaticum of the Lord's Body, and dismissing her joyful and eager in all things, the Servant of God found such a way suitable for obtaining the palm of the victorious prize.
[14] on his return he is foully slain. The river Allier, then, having been crossed, that St. Leopardinus, lover of truth and justice, sees those ministers of inveterate impiety whom Blitildis with malevolent mind had once hired, for the moneys of his slaying, by prayer and command; and recognizing them as greedy and thirsting over the matter of his slaying, and not fearing their rage, an imitator of Him who said "I am the way, the truth and the life [ss]," he did not abandon the way begun, did not fall silent from the path of truth, but for it hereafter happily reached the life of perpetuity. Thus that savage rage of the wretches seized that friend of God, fellow-citizen of the angels, and great solace of men, namely St. Leopardinus, and, binding him with hard thongs, led him away from the sight of passing men, and put him away in the gloomy places of a very deep wood, where, glutting the thirsty madness of their raving mind with beatings, blows, scourges and twistings laid upon the body of the Saint, they rendered that precious pearl of the head nearly cut off on the Nones of October. Yet the head defended [tt] in the lifeless body, already set into the diadem of the heavenly * king. Thus that excellent follower of God, Leopardinus, obtained the palm of a martyr, and is adopted, crowned, into the number of those
who, rebuking the presumption of Jezebel and Herodias, have purchased a perpetual * crown of glory and honour through the most just recompenser of merits, our Lord Jesus Christ.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. Nay, perhaps St. Simplicius. See above, letter m.
q. A province of Gaul which is bounded by the Arverni, the Forez, the Burgundians, the Nivernais and the march of the Limousin.
r. For knowledge of this place see number 25.
s. Read Vivaris, as the Manuscript of Souvigny has.
t. He is not known to me from elsewhere.
u. The Martyr, I think, of Autun, who is venerated on the 20th day of August, and has many churches consecrated to his name both at Bourges and in Auvergne and elsewhere throughout the Gauls.
x. Nay, perhaps to St. Simplicius, or to another bishop of Bourges of nearly the same age. An instrument of the 11th century in which the same is asserted you have at number 31 and following: but it is suspect of error. See numbers 33 and 34.
y. Seek therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice. Matthew 6, verse 33.
z. Psalm 39, verse 18.
aa. Ecclesiasticus 3, verse 20.
bb. From the 1st Epistle of Peter, chapter 5, verse 4.
cc. To the Thessalonians 2, chapter 3, verse 10: For if anyone will not work, neither let him eat.
dd. For thou shalt eat the labours of thy hands: blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee. Psalm 127, verse 2.
ee. In French Aubigny. See number 24, where you have knowledge of this place.
ff. This was not so easily to be suspected of the gentleness of the holy Man.
gg. That is, foster-son, or one to whom Leopardinus supplied the necessaries of life: the more recent author of the Rouen Manuscript, himself not of very great credibility, says he was a hermit.
hh. Plautus has persuastrix: understand an instigatress of crime.
ii. A monastery unknown today: perhaps that which Dom Beaunier, in the Map of the Archbishopric of Bourges, calls in French Columbier, and places on the river Carus (la Cher) between the monastery of St. Amantius and Bourbon-l'Archambault (Bourbon l'Archembauld), not very far from the monastery of Vivaris.
kk. Read: Commentum a fabrication, from the Manuscript of Souvigny.
ll. A place unknown to me.
mm. From the Gospel of John, chapter 18, verses 4 and 5.
nn. Or of the Mistress, as in the Manuscript of Souvigny.
oo. A province and city of Gaul; it has the Bituriges to the West, the Bourbonnais or Boii to the South: by those going from the monastery of Vivaris to Nevers the river Elaver must be crossed, of which at the next following letter.
pp. Elsewhere Elaver; watering Auvergne and the province of the Bourbonnais and falling into the Loire below Nevers: in French l'Allier.
qq. Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 8.
rr. Depravatum corrupted is read more rightly in the Manuscript of Souvigny.
ss. Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 6.
tt. The Manuscript of Souvigny better: Dependebat hung.
* quodam a certain.
* Read: subsequentem following.
* Perhaps plenitudine?
* Perhaps præparatur?
* Read: recessit withdrew, or something similar.
* per eam through it.
* Read: cælestis.
* Is superfluous.
CHAPTER II.
What followed upon the Martyr's death.
The body of the Saint, thrown into a pit, The ministers, then, of that pitiless workshop, glutted and drunk with the blood of the martyr St. Leopardinus, dig a ditch of very great depth, that therein the body of St. Leopardinus the martyr might be so hidden that it should never be found. But those wretches, not knowing that there is no power, there is no counsel against the Lord, the more they strive to hide the tyranny of their perversity, the more it is made manifest throughout the whole world. Finally, how great the same holy Man was with God in his life is testified by the many and wonderful miracles which were done in the showing and most holy finding of his precious body, which to any more faithful or most faithful man, if they are wonderful, will not yet be incredible. Since indeed, when he knows that it is written, "All things are possible to him that believes a," he will hold up the brow of his belief confidently toward that true stone which, placed at the head of the corner b, declares the secrets of the Old and New law with impenetrable increases of joyful prodigy.
[16] Finally the man of the Lord Leopardinus, buried under a very deep mound of earth, while neither his own nor those nearest among the neighbours find him, the Lord's bounty disposing, willed to be shown beforehand by such a mystery. For certain shepherds of flocks, wishing to drive the cattle c let out to them to the known and accustomed pastures of grazing, were by no means able to accomplish that work, the heavenly Artificer compelling. Whence that multitude of four-footed beasts hastens through the mountains and the hollows of the valleys, through broad and pathless places of every kind, toward that treasure, not knowing it, which the fraudulent malignity of the servants, by order of the aforesaid Blitildis, had committed to an excessive depth of the earth. About these places of the dark and very dense wood, the stray cattle grazing the grasses of an unaccustomed place, the keepers of the cattle too, wandering hither and thither, wonder at the secret of the vast and ample solitude, crying out that it had happened for some prodigy of signs. Amid this angular search of friendly curiosity, while in a certain place of the surrounding wood they turn their eyes, they behold the right hand of the holy martyr Leopardinus, so beloved d, above the earth, and they see a great light present at his head and at his feet. Terrified by the sign of this wonderful vision, the shepherds, placed in a place of unusual dwelling, leave those pastures, flee the uninhabitable places, proclaim to all the compelled business of their journey and announce to all the miracles seen of a certain buried body: the report of this wonderful vision, as it gladdened the hearts of the faithful of God, so it terrified that Blitildis of evil curiosity. Who, as the suspicious man never rests, so never rested on account of her malice toward the holy man of God Leopardinus, long and far retained.
[17] Terrified by such a message, Blitildis summons the under-servants, the abettors of her malice, the wife of Ardeus orders it to be sunk in a lake: then, the hour being put off e, she declares to them the truthful message of the shepherds concerning the showing of the body of the holy martyr Leopardinus, and repeats the joy of the people, and fears the mark of reproach upon herself if they do not empty out the report of this thing. And she besought f them to hasten to the place known to them where they had cast away the holy body, and to take from it the dug-up corpse of the slain man. To which should be bound a millstone of very heavy weight, and thus it should be sunk without delay in the depths of the Hiaura g. Obeying this detestable command as of a second Jezebel, and hastening to the place of their certainty, they confirm by sight the things heard h, for they see the right hand of the holy martyr Leopardinus outside the earth, and great candles burning at his head and at his feet; but, drunk with the gall of bitterness, and contrary in all things to the fear of the Lord, as they had been ordered, they draw out the venerable body of the holy Martyr from the element of earth, and so cast it into another element, the water of the Hiaura, as if almighty God could not show or restore him from thence to His servants and faithful. The body of the holy Martyr, then, being sunk in the very great depth of the waters, Blitildis was as if secure and as if she had obtained the palm of a victorious labour; but her counsel and the moment of her security was overturned by the mastership of the divine goodness.
[18] For that Ardeus of great dignity, who had always remained most intimate with the holy man Leopardinus, but when the Saint had appeared to Ardeus, who chanced to be in that place, was returning from the court of a certain lord of his, and for the use of exercise and pleasure, and for the provision of his delight, was walking one day beside the river Allier with his hawk, in case he could perhaps catch some bird; and while he was running about hither and thither in his sport, he came to the aforesaid lake Hiaura, which was situated not far from the river Allier, and behold, he suddenly sees Blessed Leopardinus sitting upon the bank of the aforesaid lake and bearing upon his shoulders two doves of exceeding whiteness. Two lights also, placed upon candlesticks, illumined him on either side. After Ardeus saw this, forgetful of his sport, forgetful of his hawk, he trembled, and, astounded, fled, and as he returned home as quickly as possible, a brightness was seen continually glowing red above him. A voice also sent from heaven, which said: The Priest of the Lord Leopardinus exults joyful in paradise, and today Blitildis shall be tortured with infernal fire. Ardeus himself, taught by this heavenly mastership that the holy man of God Leopardinus had received the crown of glory from the hand of the Lord, namely by the malevolent instigation of his wife Blitildis, enters the house, to learn whether the truth of the matter was so. Blitildis his wife, then, being questioned about the safety and wellbeing of the holy man Leopardinus, answered with lofty disdain that she neither knew nor cared about the brightness of that inept fellow, nor whatever crisis of life or death he might have. But that Ardeus, no mean lover of God, whom the zeal of the holy Man kindled, indignant at the proud woman, struck her head with the staff which he held in his hand, and the things heard and seen to her
he repeated.
[19] [she orders the body of the Saint, enclosed in a cask together with stones, to be sunk again, and is punished with death;] She despised it exceedingly, and, indignant, vomited forth these words: You can know for certain that if any sign of power was ever done through that Man, your friend Leopardinus, at once the person, however small, of my vilest slave will be transferred into the number of the bravest Saints; and the grace of the S. i, the false-speaking answers of the proud and indignant woman generated for her thereafter the loss of her soul and the death of her body. Meanwhile, having heard the sign of such a vision, and hiding in her mind the increase of her grief, Blitildis summons the abettors of her impiety, binds them with great moneys, and, promising greater, exhorts them to come to the certain depths of the lake Hiaura, and draw out from there the body of the Martyr, who was showing himself so wonderfully: not unlike, then, to the command of their ordering mistress, they come to the aforesaid place, and then with poles and hooks and the devices of other instruments they draw out the body of the Saint. They devise also another, as it were wiser, contrivance for hiding it. A certain vessel is prepared, which is called a Tun, where the members of the Saint are put back, and, a great heap of stones being brought in together, they cast it into the depth of the river Allier. The ministers of such a workshop, after carrying out the orders, return eager to their mistress, as if, namely, they were then where * a wiser counsel had been found, which would make them live in quiet, and the mistress before them should rejoice over the perpetual hiding away of the holy body. Rejoicing at such news, Blitildis enters the house cheerful, brings into her mind a festive joy, which she shortly laid down. Proving in herself what the author says: "Before ruin the heart is exalted k." For sitting at the place of purgation, and disparaging the holy man Leopardinus, condemned to the punishment of Arius, she had the last counsels of her malices and inventions. The aforesaid Blitildis, then, died with a shameful memory of herself.
[20] but, by the cowl of a certain monk, How greatly the blessed martyr Leopardinus afterwards shone forth with prodigies of miracles it is not altogether within our power to narrate: but trusting in the help of the same holy Martyr after the Lord, I set days for premeditation, and timidly take up the pen to write it out. And it pleased the divine Goodness to reveal the same holy man of God Leopardinus, cast into the very deep depths of the river Allier, by such a sign, not more frequently in use in our times. At the church of St. Symphorian the martyr in the place of Vivaris there was a certain simple and innocent monk, who served almighty God there devoutly: he, for love of the holy Man, cultivated the place of the same oratory with due service, giving himself to fasts and prayers, and watching in the law of the Lord, had ascended to the path of great perfection; and having heard of the end of the holy Man's life, having heard of the martyrdom of his passion, he was tortured with a most implacable grief. Since he had so unexpectedly lost the masterly relief of his labours, the daily and continuous indignation of grief decreased l in him, because he did not know in what place the body of the holy Father was buried; he sought this with the most unfailing desire of his heart, and in his search this alone delighted him to sing in assiduous running about, that of the Canticles: "I will rise and go about the city; in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loves; I sought him and found him not m."
[21] But the same monk of simplicity, accustomed to the habitual good of his soul's search for his desire, lying immovably upon the body of the Saint, it is discovered, while on earth he loses the runnings of his ways, remains perfectly consoled from on high n. He, after the weariness of his accustomed prayer, sees in sleep a vision agreeing with his wishes. For, waking, he foretells that there had appeared to him in sleep a certain man of wonderful comeliness and beauty, who commands him to cast with devotion into the river Allier the holy garment which is called a cowl, which the holy man Leopardinus had given to the same monk as a sign of charity. Giving credence to the heavenly vision, as one thirsting for such a thing, he takes up the garment commended, and hastens to the place shown, and beside the bank of the river pours out to the heavenly goodness deep floods of prayers and tears. He prays too that he may not be deprived of the fruit of his desire, and that the eagerness of the vision may not be ascribed to vain and empty illusion. Having taken up, finally, the wings of faith, which removes mountains from place to place according to the truthful saying of the Gospel o, the aforesaid monk goes to the place intimated, and casts the cowl into the river. It, led by angelic hands in the midst of the waves, showed where St. Leopardinus was, and made the monk joyful. Finally the garment itself remained immovable for the space of some hours upon the body of the holy Man, foretelling that in that place there was a treasure of incomprehensible price, which had long been desired, and remained delightful to many as well.
[22] Which that monk of simplicity seeing, and a great people of both sexes, and of its own accord is brought from the bottom of the river to the bank; divers men feel diversely over the sign of the stupendous miracle, some conjecturing that the same Saint of God wished to inhabit the place where they had seen the garment devoted to religion remain so gently and so lingeringly. But he, in whom there was not, in a temporal way, the knowing that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent bear it away [p], yet overcame by faith what he could not have by earthly device, had he turned himself to that work. For filling the earth with streams of tears, beating his breast assiduously with blows, he opens the fountain of the divine hearing, which in a moment, the body of the holy martyr Leopardinus being drawn from the very deep depths of the waters, transferred it to the bank. Which was still laid up by no device in the vessel above named TONNA [q], and where that malignity of Blitildis, too much in agreement with the under-servant of evil persuasion, had put it away, he at once opens the aforesaid vessel, and within is found the pearl of the heavenly Emperor, so far unharmed and clean, as though it had been laid up in the cavity of that tun that very day: and the sign of his martyr * appeared only around the neck in the manner of a red thread. And as they drew out the body of the holy Martyr from the parts of that receptacle [r], there emanated a sweetness of wonderful odour, which overcame and surpassed the delight of cinnamon and balsam, and transcended all the sweetness of earthly good odour.
[23] which, while it is brought back from thence with honour For we believe it was pleasing to divine Providence that at the finding of the body of the holy Leopardinus, the lover of God, there should come together a great and innumerable people of both sexes, who, having returned into their own country, should narrate the miracles seen, and also bless God with devout mind; finally Ardeus himself, of praiseworthy memory, came with all his household and a very great multitude of his kindred to fulfil his duty to the holy body, and showed all the care of honour which his ability supplied him, and how great an affection of love and fondness he had disclosed to St. Leopardinus while still living in the flesh his anxious grief and the continuous watering of tears poured forth on account of the holy Man's death showed. Among the manifold gifts of honour, however, which he offered to the blessed Man before he reached the end of his days, the same Ardeus with the greatest devotion also repeated to him the testament of donation concerning that aforenamed estate of Vivaris, and, the slaves being increased and the appurtenances of many farms added, he confirmed it by legal writings.
[24] and committed to the earth, After the solemnities of veneration shown to the holy body, while the body of the same Martyr was being carried to be buried, there came a certain man, attending and awaiting the help of the Saint, who had lost the function of his feet and remained condemned in the speech of his mouth. For neither his soles nor his knees helped him to perform any functions of walking, and to the increase of his miseries he had also lost the speech of his mouth. For this twofold lost power of members faith restored, which is dead without works according to the Apostle's saying [s], preserving [t], however, to him the treasure of seeing, from which he saw daily many and innumerable miracles done through the blessed Martyr: they incite him to seek the help of the same Saint, and while, through the function of hearing preserved to him from heaven, the prodigies of the miracles and of the goodness of the same Saint thunder, his heart grows warm to try that way of salvation. With these two senses preserved, the joined faith of the poor man admonishes him to touch, being brought, the bier on which the holy body was placed: and while, amid the great crowd of the people, with arms stretched out and hands raised, he touched the pall with which the body of the Saint was covered, he returned to health, and, the knots of all infirmities being broken, he began on the one hand to run with his soles, on the other to praise God, with speech formed by tongue and mouth.
[25] The Saint meanwhile For the holy martyr Leopardinus, placed on the carrying-frame of the bier, poured forth more urgently upon the earth illustrious and conspicuous prodigies of miracles. Among the manifold, however, we add one certain most beautiful, which we wish the reader may disdain neither for the meanness of the composer nor for the rusticity of the speech. For certain workmen go to make a wooden sarcophagus, where the members of the holy Martyr should be put, in a certain wood which was, namely, in view of that estate of Vivaris, the crowds of many peoples meanwhile awaiting that work. And while the workmen are looking out and looking around for doing such a business, to see where there might be a suitable tree, suddenly by a vehement impulse of the winds one certain tree is uprooted, torn up from the depth, while the others round about remain in the rootedness of their solidity. That tree, then, they assign with the whole deliberation of their minds to the uses of making the sarcophagus; one of them, in the place from which the tree was removed, looks in and sees a stone sarcophagus of very open [u] size and most beautiful comeliness. Then, showing to his companions the gift of the blessing shown, he made them all joyful and eager, both for the end put to the labour undertaken and for the gift of the heavenly present shown beforehand.
[26] For this praiseworthy sign of miracles there follows one not unlike, by various prodigies which admonishes us to believe that Evangelical saying of the eternal promise in which it is said: "For not a hair of his head shall perish who shall possess his soul in patience [x]." For the palm of victorious patience made the holy man of God Leopardinus obtain the joys of the eternal inheritance, who, walking through the ways of justice and truth, did not fear to undergo the punishments of a glorious martyrdom. For how great this holy martyr Leopardinus was with that most just Rewarder of merits and labours both the miracles wrought through him betray, and especially the wonderful finding of his blood shows: for from the stone sarcophagus shown, when the aforesaid carpenters move away the lid, likewise of stone, they see within a phial of inestimable beauty, so filled with fresh blood as though it had been poured out there that same day. For this same blood the strength of angelic ministration, the divine condescension providing and dispensing, transferred to that place when the blessed Man underwent the capital sentence in time. Here, before his entombment, the holy man Leopardinus, still placed on the carrying-frame of the bier, also performs many prodigies of miracles worthy of memory. For the sarcophagus in which he should be entombed shows itself divinely prepared, and the blood of his martyrdom so wonderfully found affirms it. And they carry that sarcophagus to the church of St. Symphorian and place it in a suitable place for burying.
[27] Here, with such signs of miracles attending, the clay of the holy martyr Leopardinus is transferred into the same sarcophagus divinely found, is made illustrious, and he showed [y] in his entombment how he pleased the eternal Light: for while
the lid is put upon the sarcophagus, a certain blind man, sitting among the rest of the people, laid down there the darkness of his inveterate blindness through the merit of the holy martyr Leopardinus, and takes up the wished-for ways of seeing. May he heal for ever the anxious languors of our miseries by the intervention of his accustomed goodness, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who lives and reigns for ages of ages. Amen [z].
ANNOTATIONS.
a. Mark 9, verse 22.
c. That is, Cattle.
p. Matthew XI, verse 12.
q. Or cask.
r. Read Specubus hollows: so more rightly the Manuscript of Souvigny.
s. James 2, verse 26.
t. The Manuscript of Souvigny: Preserved.
u. Read: Aptissimæ most fitting, as in the Manuscript of Souvigny.
x. And a hair of your head shall not perish. In your patience you shall possess your souls. Luke 21, verse 18 and following.
y. In the year 1040 it was presented with a more honourable place and raised by Aymo, bishop of Bourges. See number 30 and following of the preliminary Commentary.
z. Since it is not established concerning the writer of the Acts and his age, there is assuredly reason why we should deservedly fear lest he increased more than was fair the prodigies which he narrates in this chapter, very frequent, to have happened around the body of St. Leopardinus, and mixed false things with them.
* Read: usi having used.
* Read: martyrii of martyrdom.
BRIEFER ACTS OF ST. LEOPARDINUS, MONK AND MARTYR,
From an old Manuscript Lectionary of the Abbey of St. Sulpitius, in Philippe Labbe, volume 2 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 424 and following.
Leopardinus, monk, M., at Albiniacum in the Bourbonnais. (S.) BHL Number: 4883
By an anonymous author.
St. Leopardinus, made a monk from a slave, Blessed Leopardinus, an inhabitant of the territory of Auvergne, flourished in the times of Clotaire [a], king of the Franks. He had a full brother, St. Portianus b, whom a certain very rich man possessed as household slaves. When they frequented again and again a certain neighbouring monastery, having conceived the purpose of a higher life, they were tonsured as monks and received by the abbot [c]. And when they had served God there for some years with equal affection of mind, Blessed Leopardinus, having heard the fame of St. Sulpitius d, archbishop of the city of Bourges, called forth by the hope of a fuller thing, having obtained his brother's leave, passed over to the same venerable father, with whom he spent not a few days in the monastery of Navense e. And when at a certain time Leopardinus had intimated to Sulpitius his wish to do penance in the anchoretic life, the pious father, having approved the wish of so dear a Comrade, offering him the estate of Vivaris, and declaring the things which were to come to him, said: Go, Beloved of the Lord, secure of His help: you will indeed find the possessor of that place benevolent: you will also accomplish what you have pondered in your mind: but you will not keep these same things without the loss of your life f.
[2] And going out from the holy prelate he came to his brother, [he serves God with his men in the church of St. Symphorian, by whose order, when he reclaimed the goods taken away,] whom he found already abbot of that monastery, and set out to him how everything had come about according to the wish of his mind. And departing thence, when he had come whither he was tending, being most worthily received by the most illustrious prince Ardeus out of reverence for the kindly prelate Sulpitius, he is at once made master of his desire. Where he afterwards shone with such virtues that in a short time he gathered a multitude of brethren in the basilica of St. Symphorian g built there. And since this church had been endowed with all suitable things by the liberality of the faithful, among its other farms there was a certain field of great extent, which the same Saint with the brethren cultivated, that they might procure from it the necessaries of life. But Bichildis, the wife of the said prince, falling short in nothing of the cunning of women, her husband being unaware and absent, assigns the aforesaid field to her own uses and those of her people. And when the holy Man reclaimed it rather zealously, she, having contrived his death, drew to her opinion one of the monks, Placidus by name. When, therefore, he had one day visited the brethren who dwelt at Collobero h, on his return he met the ministers of Bichildis appointed for his destruction, by whom he was driven headlong from his horse to the ground, and grievously punished with thongs, and at last, an axe being driven into his head, was not moderately wounded; but, healed at once by divine help, he returned rather quickly to the monastery.
[3] he is slain by order of the envious woman. After a short time again, being asked by a certain widow to go as quickly as possible to the borders of the territory of Nevers i for the sake of conferring health upon her, although he saw that his death was now imminent, he nevertheless promised her who asked that he would set out rather soon. Having called together the brethren, then, he encouraged each to observe the institutes of life which he had handed down, and enjoined besides that what he had received in the same parts from the aforesaid prince, God being propitious and St. Sulpitius the author, should pass to the monastery of Navense to be possessed by perpetual right. Health then having been granted to this widow woman, when he was now returning, he suffered most savage ambushers, as before, who, making an attack, harassed him with divers lacerations of his members, and, content with no harshness of torments, at length cut off his head k.