Gislenus

ON ST. GISLENUS, CONFESSOR, AT URSIDONGUS, NOW SAINT-GHISLAIN, IN HAINAUT,

About the year DCLXXXI.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Gislenus, conf., at Ursidongus, now Saint-Ghislain, in Hainaut. (S.)

BY J. G.

§ I. The Writers of his Life; their age and authority.

Among the many Saints who in the seventh century of the Christian era, whether as strangers of St. Gislenus, to whom Hainaut owes much, or as natives, illustrated very greatly the distinguished tract of present-day Belgium by their virtues and splendid deeds, certainly not the lowest place is held by St. Gislenus, also called Ghislenus, Guislenus and Gislanus, who obtained both a perpetual memory in Belgium and an ecclesiastical cult, especially in the county of Hainaut, assuredly not common. To this most pious stranger Saint-Ghislain attributes its beginnings, growth and all its ornaments. It had formerly been a thorny place overgrown with brambles, by name Ursidongus; it is now a town of the county of Hainaut, distant about two Belgian miles from the metropolis of the province, not so spacious indeed, but noble enough, and celebrated above all for the frequency of votive pilgrimages. Nor indeed do they owe little to the same Saint, both the metropolis of the county of Hainaut itself, once Castrilocus, now called Mons in Hainaut, and the town of Melbodium, in the vernacular called Maubeuge; since these grew chiefly to the amplitude in which they are seen even today through the most noble monasteries erected by SS. Waltrude and Aldegund at the exhortation of Gislenus, as will appear more manifestly from the course of this Commentary and from the Acts of the Saint themselves to be published below.

[2] There is assuredly no doubt that Gislenus, as being both a man of wonderful holiness an anonymous writer of his Life at least nearly contemporary; and the master of two Saints of whom there will be talk below, by these titles alone gave his Contemporaries very ample matter for writing a History: nay rather, that there were not lacking, at least among those nearly contemporary, some who desired to deserve well of posterity by such labour is clearly enough elicited from this, that shortly after the incursions of the Normans through present-day Hainaut in the year 881 and the adverse misfortunes that followed, some most ancient little charters, which were witnesses to the deeds of the Saint, were found, but so badly affected by the injury of the times that they withdrew from the eyes of readers no small part of the same deeds which they had once expressed, and clearly indicated only those things from which it could be known how assiduous he (Gislenus) was in prayer, intent on sacred vigils, conspicuous for frugality, content with the reality of poverty, beloved by the needy, and filled with all the virtues of God, as the anonymous biographer of St. Gislenus, to be mentioned presently, affirms in just so many words at number 15 of the Life.

[3] He, then, in order to rescue Gislenus from the injury of oblivion and to draw back to himself the fugitive documents about him, likewise another anonymous writer toward the end of the ninth century took upon himself this task, to gather into one lucubration, which he would entitle the Life of St. Gislenus, at least those deeds of the Saint which had not yet vanished from those most ancient little charters, and likewise those which common report carried in his own century. But at what time shall we lay down that this was done by him? If we hear Mabillon, who illustrated that Life with observations and notes, speaking first, the anonymous author of the Life of St. Gislenus seems to have lived at the beginning of the tenth century, as he writes in the second Benedictine century, page 788; but if we consult the same Mabillon a little later, the anonymous writer will have to be drawn back to the middle of the ninth century; for in his judgement this same Second author lived a little after Charlemagne and Louis Augustus, of whom the former died in the year 814, the latter in the year 840. Thus the learned man; with whom I would indeed gladly agree, if he wished here, contrary to his custom, to signify by that one and the same word lived that our anonymous writer was brought into the world indeed a little after Charlemagne and Louis Augustus, but composed that Life only about the beginning of the tenth century.

[4] or the beginning of the tenth, For since that anonymous writer not only speaks, toward the end of the Life of Gislenus, of Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai, who died in the year 831, as from ancient report, but also asserts there in express words that the relics of St. Gislenus afterwards rested for many years in the same place in which they had been laid up in Halitgar's time — namely on account of the frequency of the pagans, that is the Normans, depopulating Hainaut toward the close of the ninth century, and the sluggishness of the elders — and indeed until the place returned to the wasteness of a desert; it follows entirely from these words of his that the cited anonymous writer composed that lucubration of his on St. Gislenus certainly not before the fatal expedition of the Normans into Hainaut in the year 881, nay perhaps not before the year 898, in which all Hainaut, as Gilles de Boussu notes in his History of Mons in Hainaut, page 27, lay exhausted by various wars and disasters. Yet that he did not put his hand to this Work long afterwards I conjecture even from this, that before the year 907, that is before the Acts of St. Aldegund were written by Hucbald, monk of Elnone, a certain Life of St. Gislenus had already been published, which he himself praises, as given by us in volume 2 of January, page 1045, number 25, and in these words indeed: But after these things, as is found more fully in the Life of Bl. Gislenus, etc.

[5] praised by Hucbald, wrote But that this was not that primitive Life, composed either by a contemporary or by a nearly contemporary author — although the learned authors of the Literary History of France, volume 6, page 218, doubt it — I persuade myself for this reason, that the anonymous writer, when about to compose the Life of our Saint, would not have had recourse to the mentioned little Charters, for the greater part obliterated or very difficult to read, much less to the rumour of the peoples, if at the time when he was putting his hand to the work the primitive Life of St. Gislenus, or any other ancient and sufficiently complete one, had existed as a survivor of the Norman fury or of the injuries of the times. But indeed, you will say, the praised writers, volume 6 of the Literary History of France, pages 86 and 87, confidently assert that a Life of St. Gislenus of some sort was cited and praised by Hildegar, bishop of Meaux, who died before the year 870, and so was generally known at least twenty-four years before the close of the ninth century. So it is; but the affinity of the names Chillenus and Gislenus deceived the learned men; and since without doubt they did not consult attentively enough both the Chronicle of Cambrai, which at pages 242 and 262 distinguishes those Saints, and the second Benedictine Century at pages 599, 616, 619 and 790, it came about that they unwittingly attached to the Life of our Saint what was extant as written by Hildegar, in the Acts of St. Faro, in the cited second century, page 617, concerning the Life of St. Chillenus or Chilianus, a man of the Scottish nation and joined by blood to St. Fiacre.

[6] And so, all things weighed, this opinion sits with me, partly from report, partly from old little charters: that besides the most ancient Charters mentioned above, no Life of Gislenus existed older than the closing ninth century; and that the one which has our anonymous author was composed partly from the praised most ancient monuments, partly from common report or popular tradition, in that intervening time which elapsed between the year 898 and 907. And hence anyone skilled in fair criticism will at once perceive that this Life of St. Gislenus, to be published lower down in its place, however much it was composed two centuries and more after his death, is nevertheless not in every part unworthy of credit; but neither, on the other hand, will he judge that it is of such great authority everywhere that he would not think it entirely lawful, for just causes, sometimes to contradict it or to depart from it. For the rest, whether that anonymous writer was a monk of the Monastery of Saint-Ghislain, as he seems to have been to the praised authors of the Literary History of France, or on the contrary of the number of the Clerics who held the place of Cella, or, as it was formerly called, Ursidongus, for some time after the Norman storm, I would not dare to define, since that author does not betray himself so far. I would prefer, however, to think that it was the offspring of a monk of Saint-Ghislain who, seeing his abbey gone to ruin, wished by his Lucubration to provide for the memory of St. Gislenus among posterity: for if that Life had had as its author someone of the number of the canons or clerics who occupied Cella after the monks about the borders of the ninth and tenth centuries, would you think that the cleric to whom the care of the people of Cella was committed between the years 925 and 929 would have been entirely ignorant, and others with him, of the place in which the remains of St. Gislenus were kept, although it was expressly noted in that Life at number 16, nay would not even have given credit to those affirming that the relics of St. Gislenus lay hidden in that place — which, however, the author of the Finding of the body of St. Gislenus, of whom presently, betrays about them at number 3? These clerics therefore seem to have had no knowledge of this Life; and so it is not unlike the truth that it was not composed by any of them, but kept elsewhere. However it be, it suffices that he was a man sufficiently upright and sincere for Fulbert, a most famous doctor, on the testimony of the Chronicle of Cambrai, book 1, chapter 77, not to have feared to borrow from him whatever he committed to memory about St. Gislenus in the Life of St. Autbert, written by him by order of Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai in the eleventh century.

[7] That anonymous writer was followed, in the same century not yet advanced to its middle, by another anonymous writer, [they were followed by a third anonymous writer, a disciple of St. Gerard, in the tenth century,] and he a nursling and monk of the Monastery of Saint-Ghislain, which began to be reformed by St. Gerard, abbot of Brogne, about the year 933, as is to be seen in volume 2 of October, page 253 and following. This author, as the title of his lucubration bears in the Ms. codex of Saint-Ghislain, serving under the obedience of the holy father Gerard, namely the restorer of the same monastery, wrote a Homily on the acts and preaching of the holy father and founder… Ghyslenus, and delivered it, as the very words of the Homily indicate, on the very day of the festivity of the holy father … Ghyslenus, namely at that time when, for the first time after the Norman tempest and the reformation of the monastery then begun, to celebrate the feast of St. Gislenus and to this, as he says, famous spectacle

a huge throng of the people began to run together. That that Homily was certainly composed and delivered before the lamentable destruction, that is the burning, of the house of Saint-Ghislain, which happened in the year of Christ 938 in the month of August, appears certain enough also from this, that he made no mention of this new calamity in his Homily, and that only in his later lucubration, whose title is The finding and miracles of the holy father Ghyslenus, did he narrate the burning of the house of Saint-Ghislain and the healing of a crippled woman that followed soon after, he and his companions marvelling at it together. And let these things already said of the age of this writer suffice, so that the reader may judge from the very epoch of the things he relates what credit he deserves in the little work on the Miracles of St. Gislenus to be copied out by us.

[8] in the eleventh century Rainer, This anonymous writer of Saint-Ghislain was succeeded by another writer, Rainer by name, concerning whose age, profession, and the Work itself it has seemed good to dispute some things here. And first indeed, so far as I could understand from a Fragment of the Ms. Annals of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, lent to me for a few days, the author of the Ms. Matricula of Saint-Ghislain, cited by the author of those Annals, the Rev. Dom Pierre Baudry, contends that this Rainer, or Rounerus, as he himself calls him, was a disciple of St. Gerard, abbot first of the monastery of Brogne and then of that of Cella. But what above all prevents me from assenting to the writer of the Matricula is that, if Rainer had at one time been a disciple of St. Gerard, who died in the monastery of Brogne in the year 959, it would follow entirely that, since he wrote the Life of St. Gislenus after the year 1040, he was a monk in the monastery of Saint-Ghislain for at least seventy-seven years, and sweated over his lucubration as a centenarian; which nobody will believe without the testimony of Rainer himself or of another ancient writer. Nor, however, contrary to what the author of the praised Annals insinuates in the same Fragment, can Rainer be excluded from the number of monks, much less of the monks of Saint-Ghislain; since he calls himself the least of the subjects of the abbot Rathbod, to whom he inscribed the Life and Miracles of St. Gislenus, and openly professes in his Prologue that he was impelled to write this Work now by the authority of obedience, now by the Order and command of Rathbod, now by the precepts of the elders of the Order. And to say that that Rathbod was not the abbot of Saint-Ghislain whom the enlarged Gallia Christiana, volume 3, column 92, mentions, but on the contrary the abbot of Blandin in Flanders, Rotbold by name, of whom the enlarged Gallia Christiana treats in volume 5, column 195 — I do not know whether that is not mere guessing.

[9] a monk Some difficulty, however, is caused by what is read in our Apograph of the Ms. codex of Saint-Ghislain, namely that this province of writing was entrusted to Rainer by the abbot Rathbod at the request of the lord abbot Simon. For if that Simon is an abbot of Saint-Ghislain, and not different from him of whom mention is made in the second Benedictine Century, page 799, how could he, having departed this life from the year 1015, have requested such a thing of Rathbod, who was set over the abbey of Cella or Saint-Ghislain only in the year 1040? But on the contrary, if that Simon is not an abbot of Saint-Ghislain, why should not Rainer too have been a monk of some other monastery than that of Cella? I answer that there is nothing sinful or absurd in it that the Simon mentioned by Rainer should be laid down as that abbot of Saint-Ghislain who died in the year 1015. For although, on the testimony of the Chronicle of Cambrai, book 3, chapter 20, he dissipated the goods of the church of Cella by living in secular fashion, and toward the end of his life reduced the abbey of Saint-Ghislain to the utmost poverty, he could surely, either repenting of the deed or led by human interests, most earnestly beg, not by voice only but also by a public and perpetual writing, all the monks of Saint-Ghislain who were with him and their future successors that one of them should bring to light the Life of St. Gislenus in a more luminous style than the ancient one was, together with his Miracles; and so it could have come about that twenty-five years later the abbot Rathbod, taking account of that most equitable request, ordered a Life of St. Gislenus such as Simon had requested to be written.

[10] But let us grant for a moment that the abbot Simon mentioned by Rainer was in the year 1040 the prelate not of Saint-Ghislain, of Cella, but of the monastery of Grammont, quite near to it, of whom indeed mention is made in volume 5 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, column 44; it will not, however, follow from this that Rainer too was a nursling of some other than the monastery of Saint-Ghislain; so that on the contrary, even in this very hypothesis, it becomes much more probable that Rathbod, abbot of Saint-Ghislain, entrusted the business of writing the Life of St. Gislenus and the History of his Miracles to no other than one of his own, as one who could very conveniently consult the old documents and, when the matter required, the very witnesses of the miracles, in order that thus, the request having been granted, he might bind Simon of Grammont more closely not only to himself but also to his monks, and finally that in this way he might the more safely serve the utility of his monastery of Saint-Ghislain and the increase of veneration toward the Saint. Let it remain, therefore, as Mabillon had asserted in the second Benedictine Century, page 788, in his Preliminary Observations, and as what I have just now said otherwise sufficiently proves, that Rainer was a monk of Cella or Saint-Ghislain, and undertook the new lucubration together with the Book of Miracles by order of his abbot Rathbod — who died, as Vinchant in the Annals of Hainaut, page 128, and others relate, in the year 1042 — about one year before his death. And I think that the author of the Chronicle of Cambrai also treated of this Life of St. Gislenus when, in book 2, chapter 40, he writes thus of our Saint, whom he calls Gislanus, and of a certain Life of his which was being prepared in his time, that is about the middle of the eleventh century: How great or of what sort he (our Saint) lived, the book which IS BEING COMPOSED about his Life will declare more largely; for we nowhere read, nor does any weighty reason bid us believe, that any other besides this Rainerian one was composed in that century.

[11] Let us now examine of how much value or weight Rainer's Work is. a writer not of bad faith, That not a few aids, nay monuments, which were altogether needed for composing the Life of St. Gislenus, as the abbot Simon had requested, were lacking to him, Rainer himself testifies and complains in his Prologue; so that it ought to seem wonderful to no one that some things, or even many, as he himself says, which ought to have been in his little work are nevertheless missing in it. He adds, however, that whatever his lucubration may be, it cannot be accused of bad faith, and that he brought into it absolutely nothing, lest otherwise, as he says, he should be detected as a forger, except what he had found by very sedulous investigation handed down to memory in charters and parchments, excepting however very few things, such as the narration of a certain fish which, while St. Amand was setting out to his monks of Elnone, leapt out of the river in the presence of St. Gislenus, which History he affirms he learned from the abbot Simon. Hence there is least of all to doubt about Rainer's good faith. But since those Charters and parchments were without doubt no others than those very ones which lit the way for the two anonymous writers mentioned at numbers 3 and 7, nay perhaps no others than the very lucubrations of these men, the Rainerian Life of St. Gislenus is certainly of no greater merit than the cited lucubration of either anonymous writer; and hence I have not thought that the Life composed by Rainer should be committed to print again, being content to reprint that earlier one, which is older than it. But as regards the Rainerian Book of the Miracles of St. Gislenus — of which this author drew by far the greatest part from the anonymous disciple of St. Gerard of Brogne praised at number 7, and adorned them now and then with various circumstances on the credit, as one may believe, of ancient charters — I have not thought it should be published entire, even for this reason, that both the moral discourse set before it in place of a Prologue and the prolix ethical observations which follow the narration of the miracles do not at all serve our purpose.

[12] and others in the twelfth Besides the biographers already mentioned, St. Gislenus afterwards obtained three others, of whom it will suffice to indicate a few things. And the first of these was a certain poet, unknown and rude, in the judgement of Mabillon himself. He, a monk by profession, inscribed his Work to his prelate, whose name begins with the letter O, in these words: To the Master O, particularly prelate, W, a particular and lowest monk, what avails in gifts, etc. And so, since that prelate, as is to be seen in the List of the abbots of Saint-Ghislain in volume 3 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana from column 93, was no other than either Odwin I, who presided over the monastery for twelve years and died in the year 1093, or rather Oduin II, or Odoin, who in the year 1120 instituted the confraternity of Saint-Ghislain in the basilica of his monastery, and piously, as he had lived, fell asleep in the Lord in the year 1142; it follows entirely that that poet is not older than the twelfth century, and hence cannot be of such great authority that on his sole testimony St. Gislenus should be believed — as may be said here by anticipation — to have once held the chair of Athens. After the year 1154 and before the year 1170 he was followed by another biographer, namely Philip of Harveng, called de Eleemosyna, and abbot of the monastery of Bonne-Espérance in the diocese of Cambrai, a pious and learned man, who, prevailed upon by the prayers of the monks of Saint-Ghislain, as he intimates in his Prologue, undertook to write the praises of the holy Confessor in prose, using, as it seems, those same documents which were treated above. He did not, however — as it will help to note here likewise beforehand — dare to make St. Gislenus archbishop of Athens, nor was he moved by the authority of that poet.

[13] and in the fourteenth. The third, finally, of the biographers indicated in the number above is a certain anonymous poet, or rather poetaster, who, as the praised Dom Baudry judged from the characters of the Ms. codex of Saint-Ghislain, wrote about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and embraced the deeds and some miracles of St. Gislenus in a singular metre, that is, in Leonine rhyme alternating at every half-line. That it may at once be plain how much that author is worth, it will be enough to have read the opening of his insipid Work. It runs thus:

I humbly pray thee, holy Lord, to come and help me; I set before me to put the Life of Gislenus into metre. Gislenus was born of old of Greek blood, An Attic, and about whom I am ready to narrate something. Gislenus the upright first cast back his wealth, That he might be beloved of Him who made all things. etc.

But it is to be noted of this writer that, although he once calls Gislenus a Prelate of Christ, he nevertheless makes no more mention than Harveng, not even by a single word, of his episcopate of Athens, namely when he narrates the Saint's journey from Greece into Italy. For the rest, since the lucubrations of both poets and of Philip of Harveng just now reviewed contain scarcely anything that was not said by the anonymous writer of the tenth century or by Rainer in the book of Miracles, it has seemed good not to reprint even one of them here, but only to recite from them those testimonies which can bring some light to what is to be said or disputed. Concerning the authors,

who wrote about St. Gislenus in this or the previous century, it is not pertinent to discourse here. Wherefore I pass to the things which pertain more nearly to St. Gislenus.

§ II. The Saint's homeland, his studies of letters and philosophy completed at Athens, his monastic life under the Rule of St. Basil, his priesthood, his pilgrimage and stay at Rome and its circumstances are discussed.

The Saint born at Athens, but by origin a Frank or Belgian, Although the name Gislenus or Ghyslenus by no means savours of a Greek origin, and seems rather to have been derived from one of these words, Gisel, Gisle, Ghysel, Ghyselen, which among the early Franks and Belgians meant hostage, witness and surety, and to have been afterwards given a Latin dress; nevertheless an ancient common report in Belgium, confirmed by more than one testimony of old writers, has held and holds today that our Saint was both born and brought up in Attica, a province of Greece. What more? Gislenus himself, as the older anonymous writer and Fulbert, praised above, write, most openly professed before St. Autbert, bishop of Cambrai, that he was born at Athens, which was the most noble city of Attica, and reborn by the baptism of Christ. And so, if the older anonymous writer, the guide of Fulbert, in very fact drew these words of Gislenus from the ancient little charters mentioned above, as indeed it seems to me, it must surely be either that after his coming into Belgica our Saint converted his Greek name into a Belgian one, or, if that is less pleasing, it becomes necessary that he was an Athenian indeed by place of birth, but a foreigner by paternal origin, from which he hence obtained a name unusual among the Greeks. And indeed, since before the close of the sixth century envoys were sent more than once into Greece by the kings of the Franks, as is to be seen in Gregory of Tours in the History of the Franks and in Ruinart's Preface, number 60, it is not foreign to the truth that some noble man, by race a Frank or Belgian, accompanied those envoys, who then, having taken a wife at Athens, fixed his seat there, and gave to the son born of her the name Gislenus or Ghyslenus, which savoured of his paternal origin. However these things may be, nothing very much stands in the way of credit being given to these biographers of the Saint who assert that he was born and educated at Athens.

[15] and imbued with liberal studies That Gislenus applied himself to the study of letters in the same city also, the authors just now praised and all the rest of his biographers agree, differing among themselves, however, on this head, that the older anonymous writer and Rainer write that Athens then also flourished wonderfully in the studies of the liberal arts, philosophy and eloquence, and that the Saint was abundantly, perfectly and fully imbued with these there; whereas on the other hand Fulbert, a most famous doctor, omitting so honourable a commendation of the Athenian schools, only relates that he was there trained in literary studies to a fair degree. And in this matter indeed it seems that we should stand by Fulbert rather than by the anonymous writer, Rainer and the rest, not only because the more sparing Fulbert is in praising, the more truthful he can be held, but especially for this reason, that already from the beginning of the fifth century the studies of philosophy and polite literature had collapsed at Athens, as Synesius, afterwards bishop of Cyrene, asserts in his Letter to his brother, which is the hundred and thirty-sixth in the Paris edition of the year 1605, where, an eyewitness, he speaks in this manner in Turnèbe's version: Athens has nothing illustrious now, except the renowned and celebrated names of places. And after some things to the same effect he goes on thus: Once indeed (Athens) was a city and dwelling of the wise, but now the bee-keepers celebrate it, etc. And although Anastasius, emperor of the Greeks, as Baronius records in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 518, number 17, endeavoured to recall the academies of Athens, and a certain Proclus of Lycia presided over the Philosophical school at Athens, yet the Athenian schools were not raised either in that same sixth century or in the following, in which Gislenus frequented them, to any notable, much less to their former, amplitude and glory, as is sufficiently brought out from Cedrenus in the Compendium of Histories, page 550, and from Thomassin, who praises Cedrenus, in part 2 of the Old and New Discipline of the Church, book 1, chapter 100, number 4.

[16] imbued, But although, as has just now been said, the studies of polite literature and philosophy had greatly declined at Athens in those times, and perhaps had all but collapsed; Fulbert is not on that account to be thought to have related a thing greater than the truth when he writes that Gislenus was trained at Athens in literary studies to a fair degree, that is, that he attained a considerable enough use of polite literature and philosophy. For Gislenus could — and it can rightly be believed — by his innate sagacity and unwearied diligence supply, at least in some fashion, nay even with no mediocre fruit, the lack of truly distinguished masters, praying to God, as Rainer relates, with assiduous prayers that there might come into him (they are the words of the same Rainer) the Spirit of the Most High, who would free him from all errors, and make him walk in the steps of justice. And hence also it ought not to seem wonderful that Gislenus did not suffer himself to be so entangled by secular studies as not to climb to higher things and things more worthy of a Christian man, and to hand himself over to be educated by masters of sacred Scripture, as the older anonymous writer, to be published below, affirms at number 2.

[17] Brought up, then, under such good auspices, Gislenus turned his whole mind to the monastic life, and then a Basilian and joined himself as a companion to the monks who were devoted to the Rule of St. Basil the Great. For thus the older anonymous writer speaks of him at number 3: Raised, then, under these auspices from boyhood to manly strength, he deemed it worthy — holding it persuaded to himself not without reason — that it would not be pleasing enough to God if he bound himself in the service of the Almighty by the spontaneous will of his heart, that is by his own mere choice and under no one's guidance, and that it was more equitable to be subject to the institutes of the elders. Wherefore, as the same author presently subjoins, entering a monastery of monks, he observed bravely according to rule the form of St. Basil. Rainer agrees with the anonymous writer when he writes in this manner of the monastery and of the life led there by Gislenus: Where, living for some time according to the Rule of blessed Basil, he searched out with watchful wit what things were best, and laying up all sweet things in the basket of his mind, he was a norm of salvation to all the brethren, affording all sweet conversations and examples of all goodness, namely in firm faith, in charity unfeigned, in brotherly love, in humility ever his guest, in cheerful obedience, in ample benevolence, in the urgency of fasts and vigils.

[18] With these too the praised abbot of Bonne-Espérance agrees, a monk, speaking thus of the regular cloister in which our Saint put on the monk, and of the Basilians' norm of living: For there the Rule of St. Basil was held, according to whose decree the Saints who had come together lived, of whom the elders strove to impart both pattern and doctrine to the younger, the younger to obey the doctrines and commands of the elders, all to anticipate one another with due honour, and so, as it were in rivalry, to find the grace of the supreme Judge. The more diligently blessed Gislenus looked into their manner of life, the more he understood from day to day that it was pleasing to God, the more perfectly he despised all things which he had left outside, and the more devoutly he stretched himself with watchful zeal to imitate them. And when he strove to imitate them in devout conversation, and, thinking humbly of himself, seemed to himself inferior to the rest, they especially exalted him with praises, and among themselves with worthy judgement preferred his merits. For he was among them as the servant of all, humble and abject, sparing of word, a lover of silence, circumspect with wonderful vigilance, devoted to reading, free for prayer, so affected with continual devotion that by the merit of his virtues he was * acceptable both to God and to his neighbour. Nor indeed can the most profound silence of Fulbert about the Basilian monkhood of St. Gislenus take away credit from this narration of the abbot Philip or from that of the others already recited, since this author wrote of set purpose not all the deeds of St. Gislenus but the Life of St. Autbert, bishop of Cambrai, a contemporary of our Saint, and hence ought to have commemorated about Gislenus only those things which were in some fashion connected with the deeds of St. Autbert, among which his Basilian monkhood cannot be reckoned.

[19] Concerning the priesthood undertaken by our Saint in Greece, and made a priest, although Fulbert mentions it no more, let the same judgement hold, since the older anonymous writer and all his other biographers expressly affirm that he was promoted there to the ecclesiastical Orders and adorned with the dignity of the priesthood. Hear our anonymous writer speaking thus at number 4: Crowned, then, with the nectar of justice, the venerable Gislenus was promoted to the Ecclesiastical Orders. Made a priest, therefore, etc. Hear also, for the rest, the abbot Philip, chapter 2: In process of time, when his holiness was now held doubtful by none, he is promoted by degrees to the ecclesiastical Orders, and after the ministry of acolyte and subdeacon he is graced with the Levitical dignity, and, to the heap of dignity, is at length raised to the honour of the priesthood — namely before, as the older anonymous writer and the abbot Philip relate, he had resolved to set out from Greece to Rome. Further, from these testimonies of the biographers, and at the same time from the fourteenth canon of the Quinisext council, the age of Gislenus is brought out fairly nearly at which, as will be said more fully presently, having left Greece, he made first for Rome, then for Belgium. For since that synod, as is to be seen in Labbe, volume 6 of the Councils, column 1189, ordains from the canon of the holy and divine Fathers that no one, even if he be a very worthy man, is to be ordained priest before thirty years; without doubt our Saint, according to the custom then received among the Greeks, was not raised to the Order of the priesthood before the thirtieth year of his age; and hence, since he did not set out for Rome before he had been consecrated priest, it surely follows that, even if he set out from Greece into Italy in the first or second year after receiving the priesthood, he had reached at least the thirty-first or thirty-second year of his age when he came from Italy into Belgium.

[20] to Rome But let us now inquire for what reason or by what impulse he set out from Greece to Rome. If we hear the older anonymous writer, he was impelled to undertake that journey not only by the singular love of God and the Saints with which he burned, but also by a huge desire to be instructed in the way of virtue by the examples of the just of former times; and finally he was moved by the example of the most holy martyr of Christ, Dionysius, who of old, as the anonymous writer indeed will have it, had gone out from Athens to Rome on the business of visiting the Princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul, who, already martyred, had ascended to heaven. Animated, therefore, by the example of this witness of God (they are again the words of the anonymous writer), and by the kindly exhortation of the abbot of the monastery and of all the brethren, going out from the place (namely of his monastery) he made for Rome for the sake of prayer. Thus he; but truly I am greatly deceived unless the anonymous writer ascribed to Gislenus the purpose of imitating St. Dionysius out of a certain prejudged opinion, concerning which see above, page 718 and following, and by no means out of the most ancient little charters

of his. For since not even one author of approved credit, nor any document before the middle of the eighth century, can be assigned in which St. Dionysius the Areopagite is asserted to have migrated from Athens to Rome; our anonymous writer surely could not have learned from the most ancient monuments what he attributes to St. Gislenus, the purpose of imitating St. Dionysius.

[21] he makes for it, warned by an angelic vision, Far be it from me, however, to contend that on this account the very journey of Gislenus from Greece to the threshold of the Apostles, and the other incitements different from this one which that anonymous writer mentioned, are to be rejected. For since, as will appear in the cited Thomassin, volume 2, page 690, certainly from the sixth century of Christ — in which, on the testimony of Ennodius in the Apologetic Booklet for the synod, column 987 in my copy, the monuments of the Apostles were already then drawing devout persons from all the hinges of the world — down at least to the ninth century, men of every kind and condition most frequently set out for Rome for the same or similar causes; nothing surely prevents the narration of our anonymous writer, if you except the one circumstance I treated in the number above, from being judged to have been taken from documents worthy of credit and truly ancient. And Fulbert the doctor and the two biographers of St. Gislenus, Rainer and the abbot Philip, seem to have been of the same opinion, since they passed over unpraised and in silence what the anonymous writer attributed to Gislenus, the purpose of imitating St. Dionysius, but undertook to narrate the Roman pilgrimage of our Saint itself and its causes. But can there also be placed among these some heavenly vision by which our Saint was stirred to leave Athens? Some room for doubting that vision is given by the silence of the older anonymous writer, of Fulbert and of the abbot Philip; but since the author of the Homily delivered before the year 939 asseverates, on the testimony of a manifest relation which had lit the way for him, that Gislenus, consoled by an angelic admonition, set out for foreign lands, and since the author of the Chronicle of Cambrai too — certainly an accurate and learned man, as I showed above, page 301 — confidently narrates, in book 2, chapter 40, that Gislenus departed from Athens warned by an angelic vision; I see no cause why the angelic vision asserted by these authors should be held as undoubtedly fictitious, however much Rainer, under I know not whose guidance, adorned it somewhat beyond the appearance of truth.

[22] More cautious in this matter, however, was the abbot Philip, or by a hidden command of God; when in place of the angelic vision, which did not seem historically certain to him — without doubt on account of the lack of contemporary writers — he reckoned among the causes of that pilgrimage a hidden command of the divine Majesty, that is a divine inspiration. It has therefore seemed good to recite his words, at least for the great part, because with some they will find greater credit than the narration of the other biographers, although that cannot certainly be called false. Thus then he: And promoted (as was already said above of St. Gislenus at number 19) to Orders, he burns to be promoted also to the greater summits of the virtues, and that whatever is believed to stand in his way should be removed * from him entirely; and, that he may be held conformed to that holy Abraham (concerning whom see what was said at page 606 and following), with devout desire he embraces his faith, his obedience… Not like the unstable, by a sudden impulse of mind, not by the breath of levity, not led by his own spirit but by the divine, setting aside the claustral silence in which he rejoiced, … he aspires to keep vigil and to be worn down by the labour of pilgrimage. For He was urging him on by a hidden command who was disposing to work very great things about him and through him, who willed that the kindled light of religion should no longer be hidden under a bushel, but, set upon a candlestick, be made known far and wide to many. Having asked, then, the blessing of the father who presided over the monastery, and of the sacred community which served God there according to rule, they indeed grieved with tender affection at the future absence of so great a brother, but would not resist the divine disposition with human obstinacy. At length, having saluted the same abbot and brethren with a holy kiss, Gislenus undertakes his purpose, burning with desire of holiness, and first went on to Rome with humble devotion, wishing to serve the holy Apostles not so much with gifts as with the homage of prayers. Thus far the abbot Philip.

[23] Let us now inquire from his biographers how long our Saint spent at Rome, where, having stayed some time, and also what happened to him there by divine dispensation. If the older anonymous writer, page 790 of the second Benedictine Century, is heard again, Gislenus stayed at Rome very long in prayers to God and at the places of the Saints, and only then was he warned by a divine voice that, coming into Gaul, he should seek the district of Haynau (now it is called the County of Hainaut) and build an oratory in it; but on the contrary, if we lend our ears to Fulbert the doctor, Gislenus spent not a very long time, as he says in the place cited above, but only a little while in going round the oratories of the Apostles for the sake of prayer, and then was warned by the voice of a divine command to make for the Western borders of Gaul, and thence to penetrate into the district of Haynau, to seek there a suitable place for his dwelling. But to which narration shall credit be given as regards the length of the Roman stay? Indeed, looking only at the age of our anonymous writer, we should have to stand by his words rather than Fulbert's; but since there is no slight reason for suspecting that in the older Mss. codices there was written not τὸ diutissime, very long, but τὸ devotissime, very devoutly, and that by the carelessness of some copyist the latter word was changed into the former, very similar to it; and since moreover the whole series of the Life of Gislenus does not admit a very long stay of Gislenus in the city of Rome; it seems to me that we should adhere to Fulbert rather than to the words of the anonymous writer copied out from the cited Benedictine Century, and even for this reason also, that neither the author of the Homily praised above, nor Rainer, nor the other biographers — for whom, however, the lucubration of the older anonymous writer lit the way — have anywhere indicated that Gislenus stayed very long at Rome, which otherwise they would without doubt have done if they had found written in the ancient codices τὸ diutissime and not τὸ devotissime.

[24] is sent into Gaul by a divine revelation. For the rest, all the biographers who make mention of the divine admonition made to Gislenus at Rome agree in this, that it was joined to a heavenly vision or divine revelation, and was not a merely interior inspiration, such as is commonly granted to pious men by divine gift. And the older anonymous writer indeed signifies this not obscurely when he writes that St. Gislenus was also warned by a divine voice that, serving God there (that is, in an oratory in the district of Haynau), he should await the goal of his life, presently subjoining these things: Exulting at such a vision, he (St. Gislenus) undertakes the journey, making for the provinces of Gaul, not unequal to that supreme Patriarch (St. Abraham), to whom it was said, the Old Scripture testifying: "Go forth out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the place which I shall show thee." Fulbert the Doctor also agrees, when he testifies that he, not awake but dissolved in sleep one night, was warned by the voice of a divine command to make for the Western borders of Gaul, and, penetrating the district of Haynau, to seek a suitable place for his dwelling, where, an oratory having been built, he should await the time of his calling. Finally the abbot Philip, although among the causes of the pilgrimage from Greece into Italy he reckoned only a hidden command of the divine Majesty, nevertheless votes openly enough with the biographers who assert a heavenly vision or divine revelation preceding the journey into Gaul, when he speaks thus of St. Gislenus: And while he venerates the holy Apostles with what devotion he can, while he humbly beseeches that by them pardon may be granted and his life directed, in the secret of understanding (that is, in ecstasy, unless I am mistaken) he is taught by the admonitions of a divine revelation that he should go far from Rome across the Alps into Gaul, and, inhabiting in the district of Hainaut … a place which the inhabitants name Ursidongus, should prepare in it a house of prayer to the aforesaid Apostles, and there by the word of preaching gather the servants of God to live according to rule. Thus far he, in this matter certainly not unworthy of credit.

* read esset

* read removere

§ III. The opinion of more recent writers, by which the archbishopric of Athens is ascribed to St. Gislenus, is refuted.

that St. Gislenus was archbishop of the Athenians, That Gislenus, having first embraced the monastic life and been initiated into the priesthood, once travelled by divine instinct from Greece to Rome, and thence into Belgium, his biographers affirm with sufficiently common consent, and ancient and received tradition supports them as regards the substance of this fact, as is abundantly clear from the diploma of the emperor Otto granted in the year 965 to the monks of Cella or Saint-Ghislain. For in it that emperor (consult volume 1 of the Diplomatic Works of Miraeus, page 505) speaks in this manner: When we were inquiring into the state of the places belonging to our empire which are dedicated to God and his Saints, there came to our knowledge a certain venerable place, formerly called by the inhabitants Ursidongus, now Cella: to which, as we have learned from the relation of our faithful, the holy confessor of Christ Gislanus, a priest, travelled from Athens, a city of the Greeks. But it is far from being the case that there is one and the same assertion of the old Writers and opinion of the more recent concerning the grade of priesthood with which St. Gislenus was then distinguished. Some, namely, whom certain monuments later than the tenth century also favour, attribute to him the supreme grade of the priesthood, that is the episcopal dignity, nay even by name the archiepiscopal see of Athens; others on the contrary, and these the older, suppress his episcopal dignity and chair in the most profound silence, or if they sometime call him Prelate, they add absolutely nothing to this ambiguous name — which, on the testimony of Du Cange, was once given not only to bishops but also to abbots, priors and parish priests — from which you might conclude that Gislenus bore the episcopal rather than the abbatial staff. That the learned reader may be able to decide this controversy by himself, I shall bring forward the chief documents and testimonies which support the former opinion, presently subjoining my observations on them.

[26] Those who maintain that St. Gislenus, before he set out from Athens to Rome and thence into Gaul, certain things of the eleventh century testify, was distinguished with the episcopal dignity and raised to the Chair of Athens, first call in for the support of their opinion the sepulchral monument erected about the year 1090 in that very place in which the body of St. Gislenus had been raised from the earth, inasmuch as it exhibited our Saint clad in archiepiscopal vestment and pallium and adorned likewise with mitre and cross, which the verses also added to that tomb in the year 1590 under Jean Hazart, abbot of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, at least in part testify:

In this tomb rested Gislenus, Prelate of Athens, by the old tradition of the fathers; Which is established as built five hundred certain years ago to the praise and perpetual honour of the Saint. But when the place of the tomb lay squalid, the abbot Jean Hazart, an outstanding man, adorned it.

To this monument they add the testimony of a certain poet of the eleventh century, mentioned by us at number 12, couched, namely, in these verses, however poorly turned:

For, their supreme patron having died, the kindly people of the Argives, God breathing on them, carries out a counsel commendable in its vow, Demands the teachings of Gislenus, That as Prelate of the church he may establish all things sublime.

He refuses and flees: at last he stands firm beneath the weight, He takes up the charge, etc.

[27] and monuments of more recent Centuries, and this There also make for the defence of their cause two seals hung from certain authentic charters of the year 1174, on which there stands this following inscription, St. Gislenus archbishop, traced in most well-formed and clearest letters, as I found it handed down to memory in a certain apograph of the Ms. Annals of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, lent to me for a few hours. There also support it a certain Calendar of the fourteenth century, and another prefixed to a certain Missal of the year 1464, of which mention is made in the cited Ms. Annals, as well as the Breviary of Cambrai printed in the year 1497 and the Missal of the same diocese printed in the year 1527, in all of which, namely, St. Gislenus is entered as a bishop, and as such is prescribed to be venerated with the office of a confessor Pontiff. There agree the writer of the Brussels codex of Usuard, who seems to have lived toward the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth, Molanus in the Additions to Usuard, and also the authors of the present Roman Martyrology, whose words pertaining to this it will help to have recited. And the first of these Martyrologists has thus: In the county of Hainaut, the deposition of St. Gislenus, archbishop and confessor. Who, coming from Athens, built the monastery of Cella in Hainaut: and Molanus relates thus: In the district of Hainau … the natal day of St. Gislenus, bishop, confessor, a man of wonderful holiness, who was bishop of the Athenians, and, leaving for Christ the very summit of earthly honour, wished to become poor, etc.; finally the announcement of the present Roman Martyrology sounds thus: In Hainaut, of St. Gislenus, bishop and Confessor, who, having left his bishopric, leading the life of a monk in a monastery built by himself, was famous for many virtues.

[28] some modern writers assert, Finally, to let pass other modern Writers, this opinion is wonderfully supported by Philippe Brasseur in a booklet to which he gave this title: The She-bear of St. Gislenus, archbishop of Athens and thereafter abbot in the Cella of the Apostles, page 13, and again in another booklet, which he entitled The Eagle going before St. Gislenus to Ursidongus, where at page 14 he sings thus of our Saint:

A priest, he leads an angelic life without crime. Each day he himself pours the sacred gifts at the altars, And, standing in the midst between men and the Thunderer, Pours wine and holy oil into wounds. While thus amid these things he wins the love of men And reconciles God, he becomes bishop of his native city, Elected by the clergy, and at last is consecrated at Athens By the unanimous vow of the people and the favour of the clergy. So most hold, although Rainer suppresses That very thing, and everywhere writes him only a monk; Meanwhile the matter, known well enough now by the usage of time, Is known from paintings, and confirmed by Baronius as witness: For he writes that he led the life of a monk, having left The bishopric of his see. What is clearer? He is intimated A Pontiff by the Legend written in verse by many, And by the book of Bulls, and now and then by the very old Seal of the cloister, and by the concordant opinion of the old fathers. However the matter stands, I hold, and henceforth write, That he bore the title of the archbishopric.

Thus far the praised author.

[29] But truly it is to be sedulously noted in this matter relying on these, but not ancient enough: that there is not even one of the monuments and testimonies already adduced which is removed by less than four centuries from the times of St. Gislenus. And hence, since those monuments and testimonies have nothing from their age by which to make credible the thing asserted, assuredly anyone who knows even the first elements of the critical art cannot but call into doubt the episcopal dignity of St. Gislenus, as resting on these alone. Nor indeed, contrary to what the praised Brasseur asserts, can the concordant opinion of the old fathers, or a sufficiently ancient and received tradition, supply the lack of old instruments and so in any way establish the episcopal dignity ascribed to St. Gislenus. For in the first place, it can by no means be proved that that opinion and the very origin of the tradition is older than the eleventh century. Further, so far is it from being the case that this tradition was generally received by all either in that same century or at least two centuries later, much less that a concordant opinion of the ancients about the episcopal dignity of Gislenus flourished, that on the contrary Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance, and the anonymous Poet praised at number 13 — of whom the one wrote the Life of Gislenus after the middle of the twelfth century, the other about the beginning of the fourteenth — openly repudiated that tradition and opinion, concordant, if it please the gods, or certainly neglected it altogether, as was observed by anticipation in §1, number 12 and following.

[30] But, that it may be more manifestly clear that that opinion was neither so ancient the opposite from the tenth century as the praised Brasseur indeed intimates, nor generally, much less by all, received, let us hear some testimonies of older writers. Our older anonymous writer, who composed his lucubration on our Saint about the beginning of the tenth century, as we taught above, relating in chapter 4 the manner in which St. Gislenus set out from Greece to Rome, writes that he, already made a priest,.. went out thence to Rome by the kindly exhortation of the abbot of the monastery — in which, namely, as he says in chapter 3, he had subjected himself to the institutes of the elders — and of all the brethren (namely the Basilian monks); which the abbot Philip, intending to set it out much more clearly and accurately, narrates in these words, transcribed indeed above, but nevertheless to be repeated here: Having asked, then, the blessing of the father who presided over the monastery, and of the holy community which served God there according to rule, they indeed grieved with tender affection at the future absence of so great a brother (Gislenus), but would not resist the divine disposition with human obstinacy. At length, having saluted the same abbot and brethren with a holy kiss, Gislenus undertakes his purpose, burning with desire of holiness, and first went on to Rome with humble devotion. These writers, then, believed St. Gislenus, before he travelled from Greece to Rome, to have been not archbishop of Athens but a monk-priest, subject to the power of his abbot and of the monastic community; and so neither at the beginning of the tenth century, nor even in the middle of the twelfth century, was that opinion received by all which makes our Saint Prelate of Athens, and which hence was altogether wrongly called by Philippe Brasseur the concordant opinion of the old fathers.

[31] and of the four Further, that no doubt may remain to anyone on this matter, here are other documents of the tenth century and of the four following, from which you may at once gather that St. Gislenus was not then generally held to be a bishop. Hucbald the monk, who about the year 907 composed the Life of St. Aldegund, published in volume 2 of January from page 1040, and makes express mention of SS. Gislenus and Autbert in chapter 2, expressly calls the latter Saint Pontiff of the church of Arras and Cambrai, but honours Gislenus with no other title than that of venerable man. Why so, I pray, unless because he had ascertained that Gislenus was distinguished only with the sacerdotal, that is the presbyterate of inferior order, but Autbert with the episcopal, that is the priesthood of supreme order? There is added the author of the Homily composed in praise of our Saint before the year 939 and delivered on the very day of his festivity in his sacred church, who, although he runs out in the praises of his Patron with all his strength and invests him with all sorts of honorific titles (for he calls him now servant of Christ, now holy man, now venerable hermit and priest worthy of God), nowhere invests him with the honour or name of bishop or pontiff, which otherwise he would undoubtedly have done if he had found it handed down to memory that his Saint, just like SS. Ouen, Eligius, Arnulf, Amand and Autbert — whom he does not neglect to address as bishops or pontiffs — had once been raised to the episcopal chair. Moreover, if at least in the year 965 St. Gislenus had been believed once to have occupied the chair of Athens, the emperor Otto in the cited diploma would not have called him, from the relation of his faithful, only Confessor of Christ, priest and monk, but would expressly have called him bishop, or at least have made mention of the episcopal office once discharged by him.

[32] following centuries I now proceed from the testimonies of the tenth century to those of the eleventh, in which Fulbert the Doctor, Rainer and the author of the Chronicle of Cambrai lived. And the first of these, when he treats of the conversation of St. Gislenus with St. Autbert and of the power requested of him of completing the cell, narrates the event in such a way that you cannot doubt that Gislenus was inferior to Autbert in dignity and sacerdotal order. And Rainer, besides keeping in the Life of St. Gislenus the most profound silence about the episcopal dignity which the Saint had once obtained, supplies some things from which you may perceive that he was distinguished only with the priesthood of inferior order. For where he begins the narration, to be rejected below, about the she-bear following the Blessed Man, he mentions only the sacred vestments in which he (St. Gislenus) was accustomed to celebrate Masses; and a little after he introduces him speaking thus before Bl. Autbert: By nation I am a Greek, by dignity a Christian, but by religion a monk and the least of priests; and again, when he narrates that a fish leapt out of the river and offered itself as food to SS. Amand and Gislenus, who expected nothing of the kind, he ascribes the episcopal dignity to St. Amand, only the sacerdotal to St. Gislenus. Hear the words: For which cause a pious contention arises between the holy men, because blessed Gislenus attributed this gift of God to the merits of blessed Amand; but the holy Bishop nonetheless to the prayers of the pious Priest Gislenus, etc. Finally the author of the Chronicle of Cambrai, when in book 2, chapter 40, he begins discourse about St. Gislenus, supplies absolutely nothing from which you could in any way bring out that the mentioned opinion of the episcopate of St. Gislenus had arisen at that time.

[33] Among the writers of the twelfth century who are known to have mentioned St. Gislenus, centuries the only one who believed our Saint to be prelate of the church of Athens is the rude Poet cited at number 12, while on the other hand Philip de Eleemosyna, abbot of Bonne-Espérance, as I forewarned at number 12, following the opinion of the older writers, makes him only a priest and monk. And with this latter author indeed there agrees the instrument of the visitation of the body of St. Gislenus made in the year 1180, praised in the aforesaid Ms. Annals of Saint-Ghislain, in which not the dignity of bishop but of priest is ascribed to him. The words of this instrument sound thus: The body of St. Gislenus the priest has been translated into the shrines of this chamber. With these there agree the Fragments of an ecclesiastical Office of St. Gislenus, written no later than the twelfth century, mentioned in the praised Ms. Annals, as well as some Calendars older than the fourteenth century, in which our Saint is customarily entered not as a bishop but as a mere confessor. Moreover, the synod which was held at Cambrai in the thirteenth century, namely in the year 1260, under Nicholas II, on the testimony of the author of the same Annals has thus on our matter: We will that the feast of Bl. Gislenus, confessor, be celebrated on its own proper day. Why, I ask, would that synod not have called him confessor pontiff if it had acknowledged our Saint as a bishop? Lastly, as I learned from the cited apograph of the Annals of Saint-Ghislain, there exist even today in the abbey of Saint-Ghislain about a thousand authentic deeds by which pious persons, from the year 970 to the close of the fifteenth century, bound themselves to the service of St. Gislenus, in which, however,

nowhere does the title of bishop appear, but only that of confessor; of which take one formula for all: I have come to the altar of St. Gislenus, confessor; I deliver myself with my posterity to the blessed confessor Gislenus.

[34] Since, therefore, as is clear from what has already been said, that opinion by documents which makes St. Gislenus a bishop, nay even metropolitan of Athens, was neither ancient enough nor received by all in the tenth century and the four following, nay on the contrary was neglected and despised by most biographers, and those older and of better note; I would scarcely doubt that any learned man will go of his own accord over to the opposite opinion, namely that which affirms that our Saint, when he set out from Greece to Rome, having asked the leave and blessing of his abbot, was only a priest of inferior order and a monk, and that even for this reason he was most deservedly passed over in the Catalogue of the bishops of Athens, which see in volume 2 of the Oriens Christianus, column 171. But, you will say, if these things are truly so, how could it come about without falsehood or evil fraud that the monks of Saint-Ghislain had him represented on the sepulchral monument about the year 1090 clad in archiepiscopal habit, and afterwards admitted and used the inscription recited at number 26? To which let this be the answer, that there is absolutely no cause why the good faith of the monks of Saint-Ghislain in this matter should be held suspect, since from such evil fraud or falsehood they would have had to fear no advantage or profit whatever, but on the contrary very much loss and scandal. I think, therefore, that the religious of Saint-Ghislain of the eleventh century, since they knew that St. Gislenus had been called Prelate of God more than once by the older anonymous writer, deceived by the ambiguous word Prelate, and not having sufficiently weighed the narration of the anonymous writer, nay not even having noticed the prolepsis which that writer uses in those places, believed their holy Patron to have been a bishop — preposterously indeed and without sufficiently solid foundation, but yet innocently and in the very best faith; whereby it came about that, since they knew he had been raised to the episcopal summit neither at Rome nor in Belgium, they judged that the archbishopric of Athens was therefore to be attributed to him, and on that account had him exhibited in archiepiscopal adornment both on the sepulchral monument and afterwards on the seal of their monastery, in paintings and in statues.

[35] is shown. Moreover, since the name of bishop was once sometimes given, and especially in Belgium, to priests who had never been consecrated bishops but had nevertheless discharged certain episcopal functions, for example evangelical preaching, the instruction of priests and other things of that kind — as Mabillon observes partly in the third Benedictine Century, part 1, in the Preface, numbers 33 and 37, and part 2, page 409, on the Life of St. Willehad, bishop of Bremen, and as Du Cange partly teaches from him in the Lexicon under the word episcopi — it is not foreign to the truth that the name of bishop was given for a like cause by some persons older than the year 1090 to St. Gislenus, no otherwise than to St. Willehad, who had stayed seven years as a priest in the same parish, and that thence it arose that the ascetics of Saint-Ghislain, not having sufficiently ascertained the usage of this name as transferred to preachers of the divine word, made the founder of their abbey a bishop in the strict sense, and by name indeed judged that the metropolitan see of Athens was to be attributed to him, since they found no other to ascribe to him. In which matter they themselves indeed were deluded, but plainly innocently; so that hence not less they themselves than the Martyrologists and the authors of the Breviary and Missal of Cambrai cited at number 27, and the others who, moved by their authority and example, attributed the episcopal dignity to him, are most deservedly to be absolved from all suspicion of fraud.

§ IV. The journey of St. Gislenus into Belgium, and his deeds down to the consecration of the church of Cella, performed by SS. Autbert and Amand, and his pious death.

The Saint, It was shown enough and more than enough in the preceding paragraph that Gislenus never occupied the chair of Athens before he departed from Greece; from which, since he is read to have been raised to the episcopal dignity neither at Rome during his stay there nor in France or in any other region, it follows entirely that, when he came from Rome into Belgium by the voice of a divine command, as was said in §3, and by heavenly instinct, he was only a priest of inferior order. Let us now discuss the series of his journey and the various circumstances of his coming into Hainaut. Of his biographers I present first the older anonymous writer speaking: Exulting, therefore, at such a vision (concerning which see what was said at number 24), he undertakes the journey, … and penetrating Gaul of France with two disciples, Lambert and Bellerius, having gone through cities and regions everywhere, the excellent father Gislenus at length one day reached the district of Haynau: and having also wholly viewed its villages and monasteries, he heard the report spread abroad telling many and astounding things of the blessed prelate Amand. For setting out to him, greeting each other together in conversation, and then speaking of the things that are God's, the venerable president lets the venerable Gislenus depart. For thus the prelate of God Gislenus came to the place which is called Castrilocus: where indeed, judging that it was the place which had been told him divinely, he began with all his strength to root out thorns and thistles and every harmful thing, desiring to build himself a little cell in which he might serve God as a handmaid.

[37] What the anonymous writer says of Lambert and Bellerius, who accompanied St. Gislenus from Rome into Belgium, having entered Belgium with companions, Rainer and Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance, also affirm. Whether Gislenus first joined them to himself at Rome or in Greece, the anonymous writer left plainly untouched: but Rainer, although he does not speak altogether clearly, nevertheless writes in such a way that he seems to have thought they likewise followed St. Gislenus as he went from his homeland to Rome. For first he writes thus of St. Gislenus going from his homeland to Rome: And thus, accompanied with priestly equipment, as was fitting, and trusting to the grace of God for his own safety and that of his own (namely companions), he attempted the journey undertaken at the nod of God. Then, concerning the setting out of Gislenus into Belgium, he subjoins these things: and retaining with himself out of the throng of companions (of whom, as appears, he had made mention in the words transcribed a little before) only Lambert and Bellerius … he turned aside to the borders of Gaul. But that matter, as resting on the authority of Rainer alone, too far removed from the age of St. Gislenus, appears uncertain. And when St. Gislenus came into Hainaut, as the anonymous writer indeed relates in the words cited above, he accurately and studiously went through not only the villages but also the monasteries of that province before he went to St. Amand; in Hainaut, certainly, there were not many monasteries at that time: he will therefore probably have gone through also those which existed in the provinces neighbouring Hainaut; if, however, he saw Hainaut before St. Amand: Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance, indeed describes the journey of St. Gislenus into Belgium in such a way that he seems to have gone to St. Amand before he reached Hainaut. His words are these: Commending himself, therefore, to the patronage of the Apostles (Peter and Paul) … and taking with him two companions, Lambert and Belliricus, whom he especially loved, having left Rome, he undertook a long and rough journey, and, much labour and time having already been spent, he crossed the ridges of the Apennines and of the Alps, and, having forded the Rhône and the Danube, entered the flatter Gaul, and not content with it passed through as far as Hainaut. Then, after narrating the conversation of the two Saints, he goes on thus: Which being completed, now cheerful because he had spoken with the holy man, Gislenus, pursuing the journey begun with more devout spirit, came to a certain place which was commonly called the hill Castrilocus.

[38] Further, that conversation was held at Maastricht on the Meuse: having visited at Maastricht for since, having left Rome, as the abbot of Bonne-Espérance says, St. Gislenus crossed the Danube; he will have directed his journey from the Danube to the Rhine, and thence to Maastricht on the Meuse, and there have conferred his counsels with St. Amand, the bishop of the place: which is also confirmed from this, that the same abbot, having narrated some deeds of St. Gislenus which do not require so very much time, affirms that Amand betook himself from Maastricht, where he had sat for three years, to St. Gislenus, and thence went to Elnone. And about that time, he says in chapter 7, blessed Amand, returning from Maastricht, where he had been compelled to stay as bishop for three years, heard that Gislenus and his place were commended by the title of religion, and, charity prompting him, turned aside to him for the sake of visiting. Further, the holiness of St. Amand and the report of his deeds were too well known for St. Gislenus, even on his arrival in his diocese, to be unaware of them; wherefore the narration of the abbot Philip, as it is simpler, so it appears more probable. And if the abbot Philip makes mention not of the Rhine but of the Rhône, this is most probably to be attributed not to Philip but to the copyists: for to those making for Belgium from Rome after crossing the Danube, as will be plain to one consulting Geographical maps, the Rhône does not occur to be crossed. The Rhine therefore seems to be substituted for the Rhône: and Philip mentions it in the first place, not because St. Gislenus crossed it before the Danube, but because it was nearer to the place where he was writing.

[39] about the year 648 St. Amand, On the time at which St. Amand occupied the see of Maastricht depends the epoch of St. Gislenus's coming into Belgium. Baudemund, his disciple, wrote the Life of St. Amand, and expressly testifies that he presided over the people of Maastricht for three years (see volume 1 of February, page 852). Moreover, from the letter of Pope Martin I (see again the cited volume, page 866 and following), which he gave to St. Amand in the year 649 in the month of October, it is manifest that the latter asked of the same Pontiff, though in vain, leave to desert the chair of Maastricht: and the three years in which he held the see of Maastricht Henschen draws out from the year 647 to the year 650; but Le Cointe writes that Amand was advanced to the fillets of Maastricht in the year 649, a little later, as appears, than is fitting. For since St. John Agnus, Amand's predecessor in the episcopate, died in the year 649 in Le Cointe's opinion, and that indeed when the month of July was advanced to its 25th day (at which consult our Acts), and since St. Amand received Pope Martin's answer at the close of the same year (as Pagi will have it) or certainly at the beginning of the following, it is necessary that he had scarcely gone to the see of Maastricht before he at once asked leave to withdraw from it — which nevertheless appears less probable. Whence St. Gislenus more probably came into Belgium before the year 650, nay about two years earlier: for when Amand was returning from the see of Maastricht, St. Gislenus, as Rainer writes, already had a religious community gathered there, and was sweating over the completion of the church of the Apostles Peter and Paul; for accomplishing which a space of two years could easily be required by a guest unknown in those regions and destitute of every resource. Nor does it matter that the coming of St. Gislenus to the Belgians is bound by the anonymous writer and his other biographers to the times of Dagobert I: for that Dagobert died

already from the year 638 is now acknowledged among most of the learned, so that I should labour in vain if I wished to repeat what has already been disputed more than once on that matter.

[40] first to Castrilocus, For the rest, St. Gislenus, having departed from Amand, pursued the journey begun with more spirit, and came to Castrilocus (now Mons in Hainaut), and in that place, which he believed destined for him by God, began to pull up thistles and thorns, until, taught otherwise by a certain prodigy of which presently, he left Castrilocus and hastened together with his companions to Ursidongus (now Saint-Ghislain). So speak with unanimous voice the anonymous writer, Rainer, and Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance: Le Cointe, however, writes that St. Gislenus, having set out from St. Amand, went straight to Ursidongus, thinking, as I suppose, that this stay of St. Gislenus at Castrilocus was invented for no other reason than that the way might be paved for the fabulous origin of the monastery of Cella; and although it could have been done so, yet since St. Gislenus could have exchanged Castrilocus for Ursidongus for many reasons, though not ascertained, I would not dare to accuse the abbot of Bonne-Espérance of error here with Le Cointe. Le Cointe suspected that Philip asserted it from these words of Balderic in the Chronicle of Cambrai: He (our Saint) founded the monastery by the authority of St. Autbert, but also with the help of St. Waltrude, to whom at that time he had clung in familiar affection; but I would rather judge that Philip borrowed it from the anonymous biographer of St. Gislenus. Far be it from me, however, to assent to Vinchant, who writes in the Annals of Hainaut, page 81, that St. Gislenus stayed there eight years; since about the year 650 Amand, as was said above, visited St. Gislenus at Ursidongus.

[41] Nor is Fulbert in the Life of St. Autbert opposed to the biographers of St. Gislenus; then to Ursidongus for although he there describes the coming of St. Gislenus into Hainaut and makes not even a single word about Castrilocus, yet this ought to seem wonderful to no one, since he both passed over other things in silence and treated there only in passing of St. Gislenus but of set purpose of St. Autbert. The words of Fulbert chiefly bearing on this are these: But the man of God Gislenus — for that was his name — desiring to fulfil the command of the Lord, having travelled through diverse regions, islands and cities, at length by a prosperous course came to the place which at that time was called Ursidungus by the inhabitants, namely from the habit of a she-bear giving birth, but now is called Cella … But he, having torn up the harmful trees, began to build a basilica in honour of the blessed Apostles, and to stir it up with the zeal of good men.

[42] It is wonderful with what specious fables these things, related plainly and truly by Fulbert, builds, the biographers of St. Gislenus long after his death adorned — led astray, however, as I think, in good faith and by the popular tradition of men; whoever has read what is recorded about the eagle and the she-bear at number 4 and following, even if he be by no means a critic, I do not doubt that he will hold them for fables and pronounce them prudently omitted by Fulbert. Among the fables too must without doubt be numbered the hunt of Dagobert mentioned there; since he already from the XIth year of his reign, as the anonymous writer of his deeds in Duchesne, volume 1 of the Writers of Gaul, page 582, writes, appointed his son Sigebert king of Austrasia, and in the XVIth year of his reign, of Christ 638, as I warned above, ceased to live. Moreover it does not please Le Cointe that Dagobert is said by Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance (which the other biographers of St. Gislenus also do), to have been staying in Brabant at that time: At that age, he says, the part of present-day Hainaut where Saint-Ghislain is situated was not attributed to Brabant. But grant that that part of Hainaut in which Saint-Ghislain is situated was not reckoned to Brabant at that time — which the biographers of St. Gislenus do not assert: the river Haina (la Haine), on which Saint-Ghislain is situated, was certainly the boundary of old Brabant and Hainaut, on the testimony of the anonymous Encomiast of St. Gislenus, who writes thus of Ursidongus, now Saint-Ghislain: He (St. Gislenus) went to a place of the desert, called by an ancient name Ursidongus, situated in the extreme borders of the district of Hainaut on the river which is called the Haina; and in the division of the kingdom of Lothar, Hainaut is reckoned among the counties neighbouring old Brabant. Why then could not the king — whether he be feigned to have been Dagobert or Sigebert — together with his hunters, have pursued a beast fleeing from the extreme borders of old Brabant into the contiguous part of Hainaut, if it please us for a moment to feign that this really happened? But enough of these things.

[43] and having rendered an account of his life to St. Autbert, When St. Gislenus came to Ursidongus, he began to adapt the thorny place, the trees having been cut down, as best he could for founding a monastery and church, and at the same time to illustrate Hainaut with the splendour of his virtues; whereby it shortly came about that not only was he visited (they are Rainer's words) by many, who, instructed by his sacred manners, magnified the Lord in his works, but also, his fame having been carried to St. Autbert, he was summoned to Cambrai to render an account of his life to his bishop. That which the older anonymous biographer of St. Gislenus attributes to his virtues, Fulbert ascribes to the envy of certain ill-wishers. The devil, then, he says, sowing the zeal of envy through the hearts of the wicked, it was heard that some, as is the way of flatterers, had persuaded the holy bishop that a pseudo-doctor ought not to remain within his borders to the envy of his honour, one who, avoiding the urban gatherings of the wise, had come into these solitudes in order to seduce the minds of the simple. Both could have happened; since envy is wont to be the companion of virtue. But virtue conquered with Autbert: And the kindly bishop, says the anonymous writer, having considered the words of the just man and finding nothing reprehensible in them, loved him (Fulbert uses these very words in the Life of St. Autbert, whence it is brought out that the anonymous writer lit the way for him) and dismissed him with a blessing to depart, asking that he complete the work of God which he had begun, and promised that when he heard it was completed he would bless it.

[44] what it was is not sufficiently established, The manner of life, therefore, which Gislenus held together with his own pleased Autbert; but what it was is uncertain. Mabillon relates that he used the Benedictine institute, Le Cointe the Basilian: the rule of St. Basil, to which St. Gislenus had hitherto devoted himself, was indeed not unknown in Gaul at that time, but the rules of SS. Benedict and Columbanus, which Gislenus could have received from St. Amand, were much more in use than it. There is, however, something that seems to favour Le Cointe's opinion somewhat: for if St. Gislenus followed the Benedictine institute, by what appearance or even shadow of truth could he have been traduced before St. Autbert as a Pseudo-doctor (see Fulbert's words reported in the number above), if he lived according to the received custom of the other monks in Belgium? I know indeed that this was pure and simple calumny, but calumny commonly fortifies and covers itself with at least some appearance of truth, as with a mask, lest it betray itself: but perhaps at the beginning St. Gislenus lived in the old manner, which he afterwards changed into the kind of life received among the Belgian monks at the exhortation and counsel of SS. Autbert and Amand: certainly the abbot of Bonne-Espérance seems to indicate that he embraced some institute received among the Belgians when he says: in which (Cella) he bound himself strictly to the rules of monks.

[45] returned from Cambrai, What if he followed none exactly, but selected for himself some heads partly from the institutes of St. Basil, partly from those of St. Columbanus, partly finally from those of St. Benedict or others, so that he should neither depart plainly from the old manner of living nor differ too much from the manners of the other monks of his age in Gaul? This indeed appears to have been done altogether by St. Philibert, the founder of various monasteries and contemporary of St. Gislenus, of whom his nearly contemporary biographer in Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, writes thus on this matter: But because perfect men always pursue more perfect things, the priest of the Lord began to go round the monasteries of the Saints, that he might be able to receive some profit from the taking up of holiness. Going through Luxeuil and Bobbio and the other monasteries living under the norm of St. Columbanus, and all the monasteries which France and Italy and all Burgundy enclose within their bosom, foreseeing with shrewd intention, like a most prudent bee, whatever he saw flourishing in better pursuits he drew into his own examples, that is, set before himself to imitate. And not for himself only, but also for his followers: for the same biographer goes on thus: The charisms of St. Basil, the rule of Macarius, the decrees of Benedict, the most holy institutes of Columbanus, he frequented with assiduous reading: and thus, laden with the virtue of spices, he showed a holy example to his FOLLOWERS.

[46] Gislenus, returned from the prelate of Cambrai, was received by a village, works a prodigy, and with estates, which the anonymous writer calls Racemum, but Rainer Resinum, Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance, Rousinum: it is situated between Saint-Ghislain and the town of Le Quesnoy in the territory of Valenciennes, almost midway between Saint-Ghislain and Cambrai, and is called Roisin in the vulgar tongue. Here he not only gave back safe to his host his wife, brought into the utmost danger of life by a difficult childbirth, but also cleansed in the sacred font the boy born of her; for which benefit, that the host might show himself grateful, he conferred on St. Gislenus whatever he possessed in that village, so that he might have the means to complete the basilica of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul which he had begun. These things the biographers of St. Gislenus: the more recent add more. Molanus in the Natal days of the Saints of Belgium at the 9th day of October, from the relation of Matthieu Moullart, most worthy bishop of Arras from abbot of Saint-Ghislain, writes thus: Further, as regards the lords of Racemum, the mother, delivered in childbirth by means of the girdle of St. Gislenus, which was of ass's leather and was then called Bodri in the vulgar tongue (others write Baudri), named the infant born by the miracle Bodri in memory of the deed. And that name, the male line not yet failing, remains to this hour in the said family as the proper name of the firstborn. Vinchant in the Annals of Hainaut, page 114 and following, adds that in memory of this miracle a foundation was anciently instituted under the name of St. Gislenus in the chapel of the lords of Racemum or Resinum, and that from it took its origin the custom by which women in labour have been accustomed to implore the patronage of St. Gislenus, and, when delivered, to undertake sacred pilgrimages to Saint-Ghislain: which indeed I would admit without reluctance. But what is said of the girdle of St. Gislenus made of ass's leather, of which there is no mention among his older biographers, and of the family of the lords of Racemum propagated in continuous series from the middle of the seventh century down to these latest centuries, will not, I think, find credit so easily. Vinchant indeed exhibits the genealogical series of this noble and very ancient family at page 219 and following, but begun only from about the year MCXXIII.

[47] To this prodigy the abbot of Bonne-Espérance subjoins another (if, however, what could also have happened by chance but not by Dagobert, enriched is to be called a prodigy) from Rainer, who professes that he learned it from Simon, abbot of Saint-Ghislain toward the eleventh century

beginning, who had since died, as he testifies in the Preface: and it is of this kind: St. Amand, returning (about the year 650) to Elnone from Maastricht or Nivelles, as the same abbot writes in Bolland, volume 1 of February, page 868, was pleased to visit St. Gislenus; by whom he was lovingly received indeed, but was dismissed unfed on account of the scarcity of food: and as the sorrowing cenobites of Cella and Gislenus had already escorted Amand on his way to the river Haine, suddenly a huge pike leapt out of the waters onto the land, as if offering itself of its own accord to those Saints as food, refreshed by which Amand pursued the journey begun. Whatever this prodigy may be, since the anonymous writer is silent about it, and it is not established whence Simon received it, it can be called into doubt.

[48] causes the church of Cella to be dedicated: But much less credit is deserved, although it is mentioned by the older anonymous writer, by the second visit of king Dagobert to St. Gislenus, since he, as was said above, had long since died. Whence likewise fall the things related about the place of Cella and the villa of Hornu granted by that king to St. Gislenus, and which are more probably to be referred to Sigebert, Dagobert's son and king of Austrasia: granting that the emperor Otto I in Miraeus, book 2 of the Belgian Donations, chapter 18, in the Diploma by which he confirmed the estates there mentioned to the monastery of Cella in the year 965, also said the same things. For since these were drawn from these Acts, that diploma cannot claim for itself in that matter greater authority than is to be attributed to the Acts themselves: This place, says the emperor, king Dagobert brought to perfection with Bl. Gislanus, and, as is read in the Deeds of the same Saint, enlarged with royal munificence. For the rest, it is clear enough from that diploma that Hornu was from all memory numbered among the possessions of the monks of Saint-Ghislain. And Hornu is a village neighbouring Saint-Ghislain, mentioned not only in the diploma of Otto, of which a little above, but also in the diploma of the emperor St. Henry in the praised Miraeus, chapter 22, by which he confirms the market accustomed to be held there every Wednesday. Nor was this place formerly ignoble; for, as Vinchant, cited a little before, writes, public business was accustomed to be transacted there, until Baldwin V ordered it to be dispatched at Mons in Hainaut: indeed Saint-Ghislain itself, although it had already grown into a town, was placed under the parish of Hornu until the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-four, in which Louis de Berlaymont, archbishop of Cambrai, at length separated it from the parish of Hornu: which, because mention will have to be made of this place more than once below, it will have helped to indicate in passing. I return to St. Gislenus.

[49] to the monastic life From the time when he obtained full authority from St. Autbert for completing what he had begun, and began to be helped by the liberality of the pious, he applied so much diligence and sedulity that he brought the basilica of the holy Apostles to its finish within a few years: it remained, therefore, for him to remind St. Autbert, who had taken on himself the charge of consecrating the basilica, of his promise: Autbert stood by his promises, and, having joined St. Amand to himself, dedicated with notable pomp the church built by St. Gislenus, which not only the biographers of St. Gislenus affirm, but also Fulbert in the Life of St. Autbert and Balderic in the Chronicle of Cambrai confirm by their testimony. Fulbert's words on this matter in the Ms. codex ✠ 45 kept with us run thus: And having completed according to his measure the things that befitted monastic uses, the Man of God (Gislenus) addresses the venerable bishop in such words: The time is at hand, Father, in which the lord pontiff ought to discharge to his servant the gift of the promised blessing. The venerable father, therefore, rejoicing at the good pursuits of the Man, having summoned to himself the blessed and venerable worshipper of God Amand, with great exultation of the people poured round, consecrated the said monastery to the praise of the Lord and the honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul. And thus Balderic, book 1, chapter 18, in Colvener: And the church which the same St. Gislenus had built he consecrated, having taken blessed Amand with him, in honour of the Apostles; which although Balderic connects with those words in which he sets out the first visit of St. Gislenus to St. Autbert, some years nevertheless intervened between the two. And in what year that consecration was done must be defined from the order of the deeds of St. Amand, and nearest to the truth seems the opinion of Henschen, who lays down that that consecration was performed about the year 653, when Amand had returned from his journey to Rome, namely the last, with whom Le Cointe agrees in the Annals at this year.

[50] That a great crowd of men ran together to that solemnity, not of common folk only he entices SS. Waltrude but also of princely men, as was usually done, is not doubtful: Among whom, says Rainer, a certain noble count, Malgerus by name, pricked by divine inspiration as the bishops preached, having renounced the deceitful world with its doings, was tonsured on the head by the hands of the aforesaid bishop of Cambrai; and because he wished to be dead to the world by taking up the cross of the Lord and following his footsteps, he was enclosed in Hautmont under the regular habit, and the grace of God going before him and following him kept him unstained to the end. Him whom Rainer in our Ms. calls Malgerus, the anonymous writer names Maldegarius, and afterwards called Vincent also, namely the husband of St. Waltrude, who, with his wife's good leave, having been tonsured a monk by St. Autbert, first withdrew into the monastery of Hautmont, already begun before, as appears, with his wealth not far from Maubeuge, but ended his holy life with a blessed end at Soignies, likewise built by him, as is to be seen more fully in our Work at the 14th day of July. Further, St. Gislenus, as he had been divinely commanded, was the exhorter and author for Waltrude that, following her husband's example, she should likewise bid farewell to the world and build the monastery of Castrilocus in that place where he himself had first proposed to found his monastery; which you will find related more widely both in our anonymous writer at number XI and following and in her Life, brought into volume 1 of April at the IXth day of that month. I shall, however, observe a few things here on our anonymous writer. And first indeed, he calls Waltrude a blood-relation of the king, namely Dagobert. St. Aldegund too, Waltrude's sister, is said to have been born of royal race in the Lives published by Bolland at the 30th day of January. But the author of the Life of St. Aldegund whom Mabillon afterwards brought to light, a contemporary of the holy virgin herself, says only that she was sprung from an old and noble family, mentioning the names of her parents Walbert and Bertila and likewise of her maternal uncles Gundeland and Landric; but of the royal family he is silent.

[51] Then the anonymous writer mentions the vision of St. Waltrude in which St. Gaugericus appeared to her in the church and Aldegund, which is in the villa of Buxutum. The thing itself I do not call into doubt: my question is about the place. One village Boussu is situated near Saint-Ghislain, another between Beaumont and Walcourt: likewise one village Boussoit near Maubeuge on the Sambre, another not far from Binche on the Haine. Mabillon, in his Annotations on the Life of St. Waltrude, thinks the first is to be understood here. The second is assigned in the Annotations to the Acts of St. Waltrude, volume 1 of April, page 839. But I think the last, situated not far from Binche, is to be understood — saving, however, the right of the others, if any of them were dedicated to the name of St. Gaugericus: for first, Balderic, book 1 of the Chronicle, chapter 94, names the village which I mentioned Bussud: On the river Haine (the counts Rainer and Lambert) fortified the castle of Bussud: then the same district is near another named Strépy, namely the birthplace of St. Madelgarius, which St. Waltrude, still living in secular habit, most probably inhabited when he withdrew into the monastery of Hautmont. Third, I found that that place was sacred to St. Gaugericus in a Ms. Catalogue of some parishes of the diocese of Cambrai, where it is assigned to the deanery of Binche; and finally concerning the same the most illustrious Dom Mutte, most skilled in the affairs of the diocese of Cambrai, wrote thus to our predecessors (see volume 2 of August, page 668), treating of the rural churches consecrated to St. Gaugericus in the diocese of Cambrai: Among which that one has the most antiquity which existed at Buxutum, a village of Hainaut at the second milestone from Mons, in the lifetime of St. Waltrude, as her Life has it. So that she seems to have frequently visited its church on account of its nearness, and from her frequenting of it to have arisen that, when St. Gaugericus appeared to her, she seemed to herself to be in this church of Buxutum, as the anonymous writer says. Lastly, finally, I observe that the estate of Castrilocus was not of the dominion, properly so called, of Hildulf, duke or royal prefect of Lobbes, nor of Aya his wife, nor of St. Waltrude, since, on the testimony of the anonymous writer, Hildulf had to buy that place for St. Waltrude with his own wealth from its lord; which makes against those who contend that St. Waltrude possessed Hainaut by hereditary right, though circumscribed at that time by narrower limits than now. If you wish more about the holy spouses Hildulf and Aya, consult volume IV of June at the 23rd day, and volume 2 of April at the 18th day.

[52] and cultivates their friendship St. Gislenus was moreover the author to St. Waltrude that, having left her children with Bertila, she should hide herself in the monastery of Castrilocus and receive the sacred veil from St. Autbert, bishop of Cambrai. The holy Priest of God, therefore, says the anonymous writer at number 12, wholly the counsellor of St. Waltrude, exhorted her to set out to the kindly pontiff Autbert, that by his authority she might receive the garments of an innocent life, which she also gladly did. When he saw this accomplished, he also exhorted Waltrude to entice her sister Aldegund to the monastic life, as the anonymous writer goes on to narrate. That Waltrude obeyed the counsels of St. Gislenus can be gathered from the biographer of St. Aldegund, who was a contemporary of this holy virgin, in Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, page 808, where he writes thus: Lest she (Aldegund) should apostatize from good acts, she (Waltrude) directed letters to the aforesaid mother Bertila, that she should send her to visit her. She, moved by affection, granted her to go, and ordered that she should quickly return. Aldegund at that time, that is probably about the year 654, the anonymous biographer of St. Gislenus calls a little maiden: the anonymous writer contemporary with her writes that she was born in the time of Dagobert; and Hucbald about the year 730: In about the year, he says, of the Lord's Incarnation having rolled by … the virgin Aldegund was born in the district of Hainaut. The particle about seems to indicate that it was not Hucbald's purpose to describe the year of Aldegund's birth exactly: so that one would lay down nothing contrary to Hucbald's opinion if one said she was born two or three years later; thus at this time the girl Aldegund will have been about 20 years old, at which age she could be called a little maiden by our anonymous writer. For the rest, SS. Gislenus and Waltrude obtained their wish when St. Aldegund afterwards betook herself into the monastery built by her at Maubeuge together with SS. Aldetrude

and Madelberta, the daughters of St. Waltrude, to bring about which St. Gislenus also laboured not a little. These are indeed said not only to have been born, but also to have entered the monastery of Maubeuge with St. Aldegund, in the time of Dagobert, which conflicts with what has been said hitherto: but it is known to the learned that many things are ascribed by many to the times of Dagobert which happened under his successors: nor is this wonderful; since the years of Dagobert's reign, which was of sixteen years, some number as 25, others as 30 or 34, nay 44, as Henschen relates in book 1 on the three Dagoberts, page 49.

[53] The things which the anonymous writer goes on to narrate thereafter at number 14 and following argue a bond of the closest intimacy and friendship between Gislenus and the two sisters Waltrude and Aldegund; until his death, such as the pact entered into by SS. Gislenus and Aldegund, that the abbots or abbesses of the monastery of Maubeuge should be at hand in all necessities to the abbot and brethren dwelling at the Cella of St. Gislenus, and should build a bridge by which the faithful people might go to pray at the aforesaid place: to this also pertains the donation of two manses at Basiacum made by St. Aldegund to the monastery of Cella, which the emperor Otto mentions in Miraeus, book 2 of the Belgian Donations, chapter 18. Likewise the donation of the villa of Frameries made by St. Waltrude, as also of the oratory of St. Quentin in the village of Quaregnon, almost midway between Saint-Ghislain and Mons in Hainaut, at which SS. Gislenus and Waltrude, already broken with old age and not equal to a longer way, were accustomed to meet in order to converse together on spiritual matters. But above all there is to be observed the vision which was offered to St. Aldegund concerning the glory of St. Amand; from which the last year of St. Gislenus is to be determined, if not accurately, at least not very remotely, since better monuments are lacking. Henschen, in the Life of St. Amand, § XV, deemed that that vision happened while Amand was alive, but he had seen neither the anonymous contemporary writer of the Life of St. Aldegund nor the biographer of St. Gislenus whom we publish.

[54] The former biographer, in Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, page 811 and following, relates the matter thus: who about the year 681 In those times there was a certain bishop, Amand by name, joined (to St. Aldegund) by spiritual friendship and familiarity. One night, when she had given herself to sleep, the blessed virgin saw him crowned by the Lord, and a great band of souls receiving with him the beatitude of Christ, and the angels cried aloud: Behold the lovely gift which he acquired by preaching with his mouth and has brought to the Lord. Awaking, the blessed virgin rejoices, exulting in her heart, at the salvation (now surely won) of her friend. And thus our anonymous writer: At that time the holy pontiff Amand, the course of his labour being consummated, rendered his spirit, laden with heavenly riches, to the eternal King. Whom the holy virgin Aldegund saw in a vision crowned with a heavenly diadem by the same King, the Lord of kings. To these is added the author of the historical Epitome in volume 1 of February, page 894, on the translation and elevation of the body of St. Amand, who says that this vision was offered to St. Aldegund in the very hour in which Bl. Amand passed away. That vision therefore happened in the year 679, if you lay down with Mabillon and Le Cointe that Amand migrated from this life in this year. Which being laid down, Mabillon rightly proves in the second Benedictine Century, page 815, that Aldegund survived among the living until the year 684. Further, since at the death of St. Amand St. Gislenus is depicted by the anonymous writer as a decrepit and broken old man, and so probably continued alive only one or two years, I think with Mabillon that the year of his death can not badly be referred to about the year 681, until something more of light be brought from elsewhere.

[55] happened on the 9th day of October. His natal day among the Heavenly ones the biographers are silent about. It is the tradition of the place that he died on the 9th day of October, which day the older Calendars of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain likewise mark. He was buried in the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul built by himself, famous for miracles after his death; not, however, by the agency of St. Autbert, bishop of Cambrai, as Vinchant writes in book 3 of the Annals of Hainaut, chapter 14, page 114: for Autbert died before St. Amand, since St. Vindicianus, St. Autbert's successor in the see of Cambrai, subscribed the latter's Testament, which Henschen exhibits in volume 1 of February, page 871 and following.

§ V. Some vicissitudes of the monastery of Cella and of the relics of St. Gislenus.

The declined state of the monastery of Cella Although indeed it seems by no means to be doubted that veneration began almost from the very death of St. Gislenus, and that he left a most flourishing monastery to his successors; scarcely anything, or not even scarcely anything, of the things which happened in about a whole century after the Saint's death has been transmitted to posterity: this one thing is known, that the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, as human things go, gradually fell away from its first splendour. Although in early times, says Rainer, when about to describe the Miracles of St. Gislenus, the place of Cella had been adorned not a little by the leading men of the place both with buildings and with regular institutes, and also with the light of wisdom and knowledge, yet little by little through neglect its cult and veneration declined, namely, on the testimony of the anonymous writer, until the great king Charles granted the aforesaid place to be kept to a certain abbot, his kinsman, by name Elefans. This abbot Rainer calls the most renowned ruler of many abbeys. Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, ruled several monasteries, such as Seligenstadt, Fontenelle, Fossés, Ghent, and the same is read in the Chronicle of Lorsch to have been the son-in-law of Charlemagne, having taken to wife Imma his daughter; although this seems able to be refuted from Einhard himself in the Life of Charles. Hence some conjecture that Elefans and Einhard were one and the same. Whether they have seen it solidly enough, let them consider.

[57] restores its state, and a new church Mabillon and Le Cointe in their Annals bind the administration of the monastery of Cella undertaken by Elefans to the year 808: but why it should be bound to this rather than to any other year, not however far removed from it, I indeed do not know. His first care was to substitute for the old church a loftier and more beautiful one. He also increased the domestic resources of the monks of Saint-Ghislain, a priory having been founded in the diocese of Soissons in the villa called d'Alemans, which the emperors Otto and St. Henry confirmed to the monastery of Cella in the years 965 and 1068, in Miraeus, book 2 of the Belgian Donations, chapters 18 and 22: This Alemannis, says Henry, from the donation of Elephans, abbot of the same place, who was a kinsman of king Charles, the same Saint has possessed from of old by hereditary right. With these the older anonymous writer of Cella, who wrote the miracles of St. Gislenus, agrees below at number 7. It was of the right of Cella or Saint-Ghislain until the sixteenth century, in which Charles de Croÿ, bishop of Tournai and abbot of St. Gislenus, alienated it, as Vinchant writes in the Annals of Hainaut, page 128; on whose testimony, moreover, that priory, its name changed, was called St. Gislenus the lesser. And whoever wishes to consult it will find the village of Allemant not far from Soissons in Blaeu, in the Geographical Map of Picardy.

[58] Further, Elefans summoned Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai, Elefans the abbot builds: to the dedication of the new church built by him. The bishop (Halitgar), then, coming, said that it ought not to be blessed while the body of some Saint or some relics of the Saints remained within. For it was the established custom that on the day before the consecration the relics of the Saints should be carried into the nearest churches or to some separate place, and on the following day carried back into the new church, as is to be seen in Martène, book 2 on the ancient rites of the Church, chapter 13, number 7. They therefore carried the body of the Saint outside the oratory of the monastery, and hid it behind the apse and the window of the altar: but, the church having been consecrated, Halitgar would not have the body of St. Gislenus carried back there; not that he doubted of the holiness of Gislenus, but that he hoped that, the monastery being restored and the discipline of the religious life re-established, God would show the merits of St. Gislenus by new prodigies; and that only then should the holy body be brought into that basilica with a new solemnity (which, though later, actually happened). That consecration happened on the 8th day before the Kalends of August, that is the 25th day of July, which is sacred to St. James the Apostle, Louis the Pious reigning. And if it be laid down that it was done on a Sunday, as was usually done, its year will also be had as 818, in which the letter C (corresponding to the 25th day of July) was, as they say, Dominical: but from the said year Sunday did not fall on the 25th day of July, while Halitgar sat, except in the year 829. But the old annalists, says Le Cointe, forbid that (the said consecration) be thrown back to this year, who write that Halitgar was sent to Constantinople by Louis Augustus in the year of the Redeemer eight hundred and twenty-eight. I do not know how it came about that Mabillon in the Annals, treating of this consecration at the year 808, number 65, named the bishop of Cambrai by whose agency it was performed not Halitgar but Hildegar: whence it seems to have happened that the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, volume 3, column 10, invented out of one consecration a twin, one done by Hildoard, the other by his successor Halitgar. For the rest, the body of St. Gislenus, covered with earth outside the new church, remained there until the tenth century, as will be seen below.

[59] The other deeds of the abbot Elefans are buried in deep oblivion: but then together with the monastery nor has the envy of the times allowed us to know how long he ruled the monastery of Cella, what successors he had, or what was done in their time. There remained only the memory of the most mournful disaster, inflicted by the Normans about the year 881, not on the monastery of Cella only but on all Belgium, by whose atrocity partly, and partly by the sluggishness of the elders, as the anonymous biographer of St. Gislenus says, the place returned to the wasteness of a desert, so that, the monks having been removed, scarcely one cleric remained to discharge the priestly office, who had his lodging not even there but in the neighbouring village of Hornu: At length in those days, says the anonymous writer of the miracles of St. Gislenus, a certain priest, Teutfrid by name, had received by succession the aforesaid place, in which the venerable man, having built a basilica, had directed that he be buried … to fulfil there the priestly duty, namely the office of his grade, and had appointed a lodging for himself in the nearest villa, which is called by the name of Hornu. For the place of that monastery seemed so secret or inaccessible that through the horror of its solitude it even became uninhabitable. Since such was the state of the monastery, it is surely not wonderful if then, as the anonymous writer likewise asserts, not only was the place where the remains of St. Gislenus lay hidden unknown, but the very memory of the Saint was almost entirely obliterated.

[60] the memory of the Saint perishes, But at length it pleased the divine Majesty to make known the relics of St. Gislenus, and to restore the monastery of Saint-Ghislain to its former splendour. A certain blind man, warned in sleep to go to that monastery, obeyed the commands, and having recovered the sight of his eyes returned joyful to his own, having first warned the priest of the place that the limbs of Gislenus in the often-mentioned monastery

lay and ought to be translated from their place of burial; and he, since he did not know the place, put no effort or diligence into searching it out: at length St. Gislenus himself, appearing to a certain Winerad, an upright and pious man, showed him that place, and ordered that on a fixed day, namely the 29th of September, sacred to St. Michael, his bones should be dug out of the ground; on which day, having joined the priest of the place to himself, he found the remains of St. Gislenus in the place designated to him (behind the apse of the church, from what was said above). But since in the synod of Mainz celebrated in the year 813 it had been decreed in chapter 50 that henceforth no one should presume to translate the bodies of the Saints from place to place without the counsel of the prince and of the bishops and the licence of the holy synod, they judged that the diocesan bishop ought to be summoned before they carried the relics of the Saint back into the basilica built by Elefans. Gilbaldus (or Oilbaldus, as Rainer writes), archdeacon of the church of Cambrai, did this by the order and in the stead of Stephen, bishop of Cambrai, on the 15th day of the month, as I think, of October; during all which time the bones of St. Gislenus spread a most pleasant odour, adds the anonymous writer of his Miracles. Further, it is not very easy to define accurately the year in which this translation took place.

[61] but it revives, his relics having been discovered The anonymous writer of the Miracles, treating of the Miracles which preceded the finding of the body of St. Gislenus, speaks thus: This, then, is done or made public at a fitting time, nay one pleasing to the heavenly regard, namely when Henry the Saxon was bearing the distinguished sceptres as king of Austrasian France or Germany, Ghiselbert being duke or consul of the same regions, so that the celebrated name of the famous miracle might be published more widely through princes of famous name. Gislebert, set first over Lotharingia by Charles the Simple, and then having become a rebel against Charles, fled to Henry the Fowler, through whose agency, reconciled to Charles, he received a part of Lotharingia; but he harassed with huge slaughter the others who held what was his, until he recovered all that was his, as the Saxon Chronicle has it, volume 8 of the writers of French affairs, pages 224 and following. Then in the year 929, as is related in the same place, page 227, Henry, who already held a part of Lotharingia, hoping that through the agency of Gislebert he would have the whole kingdom of Lothar, gave him his daughter to wife, the whole kingdom of Lothar being likewise subdelegated (to duke Gislebert). The anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Gislenus seems to designate this epoch, so that the Finding of the body of St. Gislenus does not seem to have happened before the year 929; since the anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Gislenus seems, by the words just praised, to bind the apparitions which preceded it, and also the very Finding of the body of St. Gislenus, to the times of Gislebert, advanced anew by Henry to the administration of all Lotharingia. For otherwise why, in recording these things, would he have mentioned Henry rather than Charles the Simple, or Gislebert alone? But neither can that translation be deferred much beyond the said year, since Stephen died in the year 933, or certainly the following, which Balderic marks in book 1, chapter 68, and survived the translation, as will be plain from what follows; so that it can not badly be laid down that that solemnity was performed about the year 929, or some years earlier, if the anonymous writer's words are to be taken a little more widely.

[62] Further, the care of the basilica, and of the sacred relics of St. Gislenus now placed in a lofty place, was entrusted to a certain priest, about the year 929, which the people of Maubeuge carry off and there began to be a great concourse of men to the basilica of St. Gislenus, nay, if you hear Rainer, also of envy, led by which the people of Maubeuge, having entered into counsel with the people of Mons, stealthily carried off the body of St. Gislenus and brought it to the monastery of Maubeuge. Thereupon, when the priest, the sacristan of the Cella of the blessed man, and the neighbours round about, in suspense, are affected with excessive grief over the body carried off, the same (Saint) appeared to some of them in a vision, consoling them, and promising that he would quickly return, and at the same time warning that the people of Maubeuge should be called to account over this. So the anonymous writer of the Miracles: but Rainer narrates the matter a little more at length and otherwise: one apparition, made to a certain Egrard, he attributes to St. Lambert, disciple of Gislenus; and another, offered to a certain Adelelm, to St. Gislenus. He adds that Egrard had in command from St. Lambert to go to count Herbert, an excellent neighbour, namely so that through Herbert's intercession the people of Maubeuge might restore the body of St. Gislenus: but that Egrard performed none of these things. Who that Herbert was is doubtful. Mabillon in the historical Index of the second Benedictine century calls him count of Mons. Ragenar, the brother of Gislebert, was at that time count of Hainaut: nor do I know whether anyone else enjoyed the title of count of Mons at that time: Heribert, count of Vermandois, is preferable, whose dominion bordered on Hainaut, and whose treaty of friendship contracted with Gislebert Flodoard mentions at the year 931.

[63] But how the people of Maubeuge were compelled to restore the body of St. Gislenus and the people of Maubeuge are compelled to restore them: Rainer reveals more clearly than our anonymous writer, whose words on this matter it has therefore seemed good to set here: St. Gislenus himself appeared anew in the villa of Havay to a certain Frenchman named Adelelm and said to him: I am Gislenus. Do you know what has been done with my body? And he: I know all things, Lord, he said. Then the Saint said: Wickedly has it been done against me. But now do not delay to go to Maubeuge to tell the prelate Theodrada and the other sisters with the priests that, giving it back without delay, my body be restored to its place. And rising in the morning, the said Adelelm did all the things which the Saint had commanded. But they, negligent, spurned his words. And a messenger having been sent to the bishop of the people of Cambrai, the lord Stephen, he came as far as the castle of Maubeuge, and standing outside, sent in men to say to the elders: Give back, I pray, brothers and sisters, the body of the kindly prophet Gislenus, that it may be restored to its place given by Christ. Otherwise I will excommunicate, so that no one in this place may celebrate Masses or other services to God. Hearing which, the people of Maubeuge, though compelled, nevertheless obeyed the bishop. It will help also to hear Rainer setting out the day and manner in which the body of St. Gislenus was brought back to its former place: he goes on thus: Then also the bishop ordered the dean to come with all the brethren of his deanery, and to bring back the clod of the Saint with reverence and worthy honour; and when they obeyed these orders, the bishop also commanded that the priests, one by one, should guard the place with the holy body week by week, until he should seek with duke Gislebert men who should keep the same place day and night. The bringing back of the sacred ashes was indeed done on the Ides of December, and they were laid up again on the same day, with the greatest jubilation of clergy and people, in the often-mentioned basilica of the Apostles.

[64] is transferred from clerics to Benedictines The priests whom Stephen, bishop of Cambrai, had assigned to keep the relics of St. Gislenus must have yielded the place not long after; and not undeservedly, if the things are true which Rainer, in Mabillon, Benedictine century 2, page 798, narrates of their rash entry into the monastery of Cella, their most evil life, and the relics of St. Gislenus carried about hither and thither for the sake of base gain: but on these matters the anonymous writer of the Miracles is deeply silent, and from the bringing back of the sacred ashes of St. Gislenus presently proceeds to the restoration of the Benedictine institute in the monastery of Saint-Ghislain in these words: Afterwards, God assenting, the merits of his servant intervening, it was decreed by the counsel of the princes that there ought to be in the place distinguished by these benefits a company of the ecclesiastical order continually serving the heavenly Majesty. Therefore, the monastic order having been instituted under the norm of the Saint's habit, the monastery itself is raised at length by greater virtues. Afterwards, he says; namely after the relics of St. Gislenus had been brought back: the writer of the Life of St. Gerard of Brogne is therefore not to be heard, who ascribes the finding and bringing back of the body of St. Gislenus to St. Gerard, adding also some inventions: for he must yield much in authority and credit to our anonymous writer, who was living in the monastery of Saint-Ghislain itself under abbot Gerard in the year 938, as is clear from what is to be said at number 66; which is to be observed here, as also that the same anonymous writer did not come into our hands before the Acts of St. Gerard were published by us.

[65] the monastery of Cella about the year 933. For the rest, the other circumstances which accompanied the said restoration of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain must be sought from Rainer or from the author of the Life of St. Gerard; on Rainer's testimony, its chief author was Gislebert, duke of Lotharingia, who, having summoned St. Gerard from Brogne, urged and persuaded him to undertake the care and government of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, although he was already then the ruler of many abbeys: but see this saying of Rainer discussed in volume 2 of October, page 255 and the two following. Again, on Rainer's testimony, Gislebert was moved to this chiefly in part by a certain vision in which St. Gislenus, appearing to him, demanded that St. Gerard be set over his monastery; which he not only performed, but also restored the estates which had belonged to it, both by royal precepts, says Rainer in the Ms. kept with us, chapter 9, and by the salutary exhortations of Stephen, bishop of Cambrai (either still surviving or having died a little before): from which it seems to follow that this happened about the year 933: which is confirmed from what the anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Gislenus relates in the last place about the crippled woman Dada: for he writes that she suffered from contraction of the legs immediately after her marriage was entered on, and was freed from that evil by the merits of St. Gislenus under abbot Gerard, and for that cause wished to serve the watches of the church of Cella under the sacred veil (I add, and under the governance of the cenobites of Saint-Ghislain); but that, her husband opposing her desire of this kind, she relapsed into the same disease, until in the year 938, restored again to health by the patronage of St. Gislenus, she promised to serve the ministries of the church of Cella under the sacred veil, after she had suffered from that disease for six years: and if you number 6 years in retrograde order from the year 938, you will roll back to the year 933 or 932. That this happened in the time of St. Gerard Rainer also affirms in the Ms. kept with us: For at the same time at which the same abbot Gerard was seen to preside over the brethren of the often-mentioned Cella, a certain woman named Dada, who after the lawful embraces of marital union was so contracted by the divine nod, etc.

[66] The anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Gislenus wished to designate the year 938 accurately on account of the burning of the monastery of Saint-Ghislain, which, burning a little afterwards, the flame spares the relics of the Saint, which happened as it was passing. This lamentable destruction, he says, came about in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord nine hundred and thirty-eight, on Sunday at the sixth hour, on the 12th day before the Kalends of September, duke Ghislebert contending against Otto king of the Saxons for the sake of the kingdom. But since in the year 938 the 21st day of August was not a Sunday, I think the anonymous writer noted not the XIIth but the XIVth day before the Kalends of September; both because an error of this kind could more easily have been committed, the cipher V being changed into a unit, than the year 936, in which the 12th day before the Kalends of September was a Sunday, could have been changed into the year 938. And surely what he records of Gislebert's contention with Otto, the son of Henry the Fowler, fits the year 936 less well: for Gislebert perished drowned in the waves of the Rhine in the year 939: nor did he begin to move arms against Otto before the year 938. Flodoard in the Chronicle at the year

939, in Bouquet, volume 8 of the Writers of French affairs, speaks of the Deeds of Gislebert in this manner: The Lotharingians desert Otto their king and come to king Louis, who put off receiving them… The Lotharingians come again to king Louis: and the nobles of that kingdom, namely duke Gislebert and Otto, and the counts Isaac and Theodoric, commit themselves to the same king… King Otto, having crossed the Rhine, lays waste … the kingdom of Lotharingia … Gislebert, duke of the Lotharingians, having set out across the Rhine to plunder, the Saxons pursuing him as he returned, is said to have leapt down into the Rhine with his horse: and, killed there by the force of the waves, he could not afterwards be found, as is said. Sigebert, although he wrongly lays down that Henry died in the year 937, nevertheless writes thus at the year 938: Everard, count of the palace, and Gislebert, duke of Lotharingia, rebel against Otto (afterwards) emperor. And the Deeds of Gislebert which Flodoard and other Writers heap together into one and the same year 939 could easily have taken their beginning in the year 938: whence I judge it more probable that the year 938 should be retained here. But, you will say, already from the year 937 St. Gerard had undertaken the care of the monastery of St. Bavo, who nevertheless is said by the anonymous writer to have been present at the healing of the woman Dada, done at the approaching festivity of St. Gislenus. Granted: but nothing prevents him, having left the monastery of St. Bavo for a while, from having revisited Cella from Ghent, to bring a remedy to the recent disaster and such solace as he could to his monks. For the rest, in so grave a misfortune, as the anonymous writer of the Miracles says at number 9, this was a solace to the cenobites of Saint-Ghislain, that the flame spared the relics of St. Gislenus and of other Saints.

[67] some of whose miracles are touched on here, Thus far we have followed as guide the contemporary anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Gerard: but since here he, or certainly the apograph of Saint-Ghislain, deserts us, we are compelled to borrow what is to be said thereafter either from Rainer or from elsewhere. Some miracles indeed, wrought by the merits of St. Gislenus, although related by the anonymous writer, we have not touched on: but these we shall illustrate, so far as can be done, in our Annotations on the lucubration of this anonymous writer. Further, after the Miracles of St. Gislenus related by the anonymous writer, three are subjoined in Rainer, of which we shall treat the 1st and 3rd in the following §: the second, which some, says Rainer, who still remain among human affairs, confirm that they saw, it will suffice to touch on in passing. And it runs thus. A certain Dominic from the villa where the pledges of St. Salvius are venerated (there is now a priory of the Benedictine Order there near Valenciennes, and it was formerly called Brevitica, commonly Bruay), deprived of sight, in order to recover it, as he had been warned in sleep, came to the monastery of Cella to implore the help of St. Gislenus, and having received from Hunold the sacristan water from the well of St. Gislenus, and having washed his eyes with it, returned to his own, granted the light he had desired.

§ VI. The relics of the Saint often translated, and a confraternity erected in his name.

The relics of the Saint After it came about by the providence of the divine Majesty that the relics of St. Gislenus, buried in the ground, were discovered in the tenth century and exposed to public veneration, his fame grew far and wide, and his sacred bones were very often translated from place to place, or carried about for various causes. Jacques de Guyse, volume 2 of the Annals of Hainaut, folio 68, relates that this happened also in the ninth century, in the time of Ragenar or Rainer, the first of this name, whom he affirms, about the year 881, when he feared lest the Normans should turn their arms against Hainaut, to have translated the relics of St. Gislenus to Mons, surrounded by a huge column of the inhabitants and walking barefoot. But of this translation there exists no trace either in the anonymous writers hitherto praised or in Rainer; nor (I speak of the relics of St. Gislenus) does it seem to have taken place: for, on the testimony of the anonymous writer, the disciple of St. Gerard, between the year 925 and 929, as was said at number 61, the bones of St. Gislenus were found in the same place in which they had been committed to the earth about the year 818 in the age of Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai, and of Elefans, abbot of Cella, and that indeed when a deep oblivion of the place where they lay possessed the minds of men and even its ministers — which oblivion does not seem likely to have taken place, if this translation had happened when the Normans were threatening Hainaut toward the end of the immediately preceding century, and the remains of St. Gislenus had then been brought back into the monastery of Cella in more peaceful times, so small a space of time having intervened between their bringing back to their former place and their finding.

[69] More certain is that translation which happened under Simon, abbot of Cella, to Grandlieu toward the end of the tenth century and hence toward the end of the tenth century or the beginning of the following: Mabillon inserted it from Rainer in the second Benedictine century, page 799, where you may read roughly these things: a feud having arisen in the time of the counts Arnulf and Rainer between the people of Mons and those of Hornu had already broken out so far that they did not abstain even from mutual slaughter: Rainer, count of Hainaut, and Simon, abbot of Cella, intending to meet this evil, call both parties together into a certain field, called the great place, and situated, as they say, near Quaregnon, so that they might enter into peace before the relics of SS. Gislenus and Waltrude: both obeyed, but the people of Mons with a less sincere mind; for, more greedy of vengeance, they had hidden among the shrubs arms with which to attack the people of Hornu unawares. Meanwhile a rumour was creeping about that Simon had sold the relics of St. Gislenus to count Baldwin. But indeed Simon, when both parties had come to the sacred relics, used a speech of this kind in order to refute the calumny cast on him: O Lord, whose sight rules in the mind, if the body of our patron is truly known by thee to be whole, make this clear before the sight of the doubters by a sign of thy power. Which prayer, says Rainer, was followed by so great a crash of thunder and of cloud and of the air stirred up from above, and moreover the pall which covered the secret of the worthy confessor was shaken off… Which cause being seen, those who had brought the ambushing arms, pricked to the heart, and all the others also, prostrate, cry out with common vow that under the pledge of peace the help of St. Gislenus is to be observed: and enriching him with many gifts they carried him back with joy, returning to their own Cella.

[70] Gilles Boussu relates these things in the History of Mons, page 34, or the beginning of the following; between the year 985 and 1002, in which latter year he says that Rainer, count of Hainaut, the third of this name, died. Vinchant narrates that it was done at the year 985: but it seems to have happened later. For since some at that time accused Simon of having sold the relics of St. Gislenus to count Baldwin, and seem to have tried on this head to stir up hatred against him; and since the Baldwin here mentioned was no other than Baldwin IV, surnamed the Bearded, son of Arnulf II who died about the year 989; the things related in the number above do not seem to have happened before this year; nay rather at that time at which some feud had already arisen between Baldwin IV and Arnulf, count of Cambrai and Valenciennes. And Balderic, in book 1 of his Chronicle, makes that time manifest in some fashion in the following words: But meanwhile, feuds having arisen between the counts, namely Baldwin of Flanders and Arnulf of Valenciennes, a most bitter discord grew up, which, proceeding even to war, very often interrupted the quiet of this city (of Cambrai). For because bishop Erluin (of Cambrai), as being a comrade in common submission under the emperor, had familiarity with him, Baldwin (who favoured the French) inflicted many troubles on this city. He applied himself to his fury even more grievously when he heard of the death of the emperor Otto the third, who died in the year 1002. Then, having narrated the death of Otto and the election of Henry II, he goes on thus: But Baldwin himself meanwhile, having gathered a great band, besieged the castle of Valenciennes, and, Arnulf having been expelled because he was far inferior in number, presumed to claim it. I would prefer, therefore, to assign the quarrels of the people of Hornu and Mons, of which in the number above, to about the year 1000 rather than to 985.

[71] but in the eleventh century to the castle of Cambrésis and to Cambrai, In the eleventh century Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai, built from the foundation an oratory of St. Andrew in the Castle of Cambrésis (Le Cateau), at the fifth milestone from the city of Cambrai, on the testimony of Balderic, book 3, chapter 49, which is now a Benedictine monastery. In what year it was dedicated there is no agreement among the Writers I have seen: several, however, affirm that it happened in the year 1025 on the 22nd day of September. However it be, that the relics of St. Gislenus were brought there to increase the pomp of the said solemnity I learn from Colvener, who writes thus on this matter in his Annotations on the said text of Balderic: A French Ms. Catalogue and Gazet write that (the monastery of St. Andrew) was dedicated in the year MXXV. The same Catalogue adds that to the solemnity of that dedication there were brought, by Gerard's mandate, the bodies of the Saints Gaugericus, Autbert, Acharius, Salvius, Ragenfred, Wasnulf, Gislenus and Humbert. The author who in the seventeenth century wrote the History of the Miracles of St. Gislenus in the French language, who made it a matter of conscience to assert nothing without documents, also asserts this. He further says that the relics of St. Gislenus were likewise brought to Cambrai when the same Gerard dedicated with a most solemn rite the cathedral church of Cambrai, which he had built, in the year 1030, as Balderic writes, book 3, chapter 49, on the 15th day before the Kalends of November.

[72] to the emperor Conrad Five years later another translation of the relics of St. Gislenus took place, which Rainer, in Mabillon, Benedictine century 2, pages 799 and following, relating things done in his own age, hands down in these words: Compelled by necessity, the Lord abbot Heribrand with his brethren, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord MXXXV, not being able to bear the devastation of their place, were seen to have gone with the body of blessed Gislenus to the clemency of the emperor Conrad (the second of this name, surnamed the Salian), complaining tearfully of the devastation of their place and of the indigence of their monastery: by whom, most kindly consoled and endowed with royal munificence … they returned to their well-known monastery. What cause there was why the monks of Cella found it necessary to take refuge with Conrad you will understand more fully from Balderic, book 3, chapter 21: But after the death, he says, of abbot Wenric (of Cella), count Rainer substituted two abbots (Guido and Hilfrid), one after the other: presuming in this way to claim the abbey. Which, because it was wrong, the Lord bishop (Gerard I of Cambrai) rejected by his authority, since, as we said above, no one besides the emperor or the bishop ought to commend any abbey. But afterwards the emperor, at the Lord bishop's admonition, as is fitting, raised up whom he wished, namely Herbrand, who is now abbot. He too suffered many evils from count Rainer, that is Raginerius, the fourth of this name. For the rest, it was not unusual for the relics of the Saints to be presented to princes by clerics and monks if they had suffered some calamity or injury. Thus the clergy of Maastricht in the year 944 are read in the Appendix of Regino to have carried the relics of St. Servatius to Duisburg to Otto I on account of the manifold injuries inflicted on them by count Immo.

[73] Not without a prodigy was that journey undertaken. For when, as the writer just praised says, returning to Saint-Ghislain, Visé (between Liège and Maastricht

this town is situated) he had reached, and to the monastery of Thorn, he was prevented for a while by the sacristan, the doors being barred, from entering the church, until, as he was meditating going elsewhere from there with the relics of St. Gislenus, the doors of the church opened of their own accord. Likewise a blind girl here, running to the relics of St. Gislenus, recovered the use of her eyes. Heribrand also turned aside on that journey to the nuns of Thorn, and, kindly received by them, gave as a pledge of a grateful mind to the abbess of the place a Life of St. Gislenus (most probably the one written by the anonymous writer) as a gift, which the following year, applied by the abbess's order to a woman in danger in childbirth, brought her safety: and from the time when the virgins of Thorn received the Life of St. Gislenus they decreed that the Saint's natal day should be celebrated in their monastery every year. The abbess's name was Gerberga, who perhaps succeeded Benedicta, daughter of Bl. Ansfrid, count of Huy, and of Hirsuind: her name at any rate seems to be added to the catalogue of the abbesses of Thorn, very mutilated at its beginning. Further, this monastery is situated near Maaseik in the diocese of Liège, and was at first of the Benedictine institute, but was afterwards converted into a college of noble canonesses, which flourishes even today. Concerning Bl. Ansfrid or Aufrid you will find more in our Work at the 3rd day of May.

[74] The relics of St. Gislenus were brought to Cambrai again in the year 1064, and again to Cambrai and to the monastery of Hasnon when St. Lietbert dedicated the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, which is a Benedictine monastery in that city, as is to be seen in the Catalogue of the Saints whose relics were brought there on that occasion, subjoined to the Life of St. Lietbert in volume 4 of June, page 601. Six years later they were brought to the monastery of Hasnon on the Scarpe, three leagues from Valenciennes, when Baldwin VI, count of Flanders and Hainaut, wished the church of this monastery, after canons had been substituted in it for Benedictine monks, to be dedicated with a very solemn rite and pomp. There were present at this solemnity the bishops Lietbert of Cambrai, Ratbod of Noyon and Rainer of Orléans: and fifteen abbots, and among these Fulcard of Cella. The relics of very many Saints brought there from neighbouring places increased the solemnity, which Tomellus the monk, who was Baldwin's secretary, enumerates in chapter 17 of the History of the monastery of Hasnon in Martène, volume 3 of the Anecdota; and he reckons the relics of St. Gislenus in the tenth place. This dedication, says Tomellus, was performed in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul on the third day before the Nones of June (not of March, as Locrius, or of July, as Miraeus in the Chronicles, write), in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord MLXX, Pope Alexander presiding over the holy Roman church, Henry reigning as king of Lotharingia and Philip of France.

[75] From what has been said hitherto, how celebrated St. Gislenus was in the eleventh century [and were translated to the monastery of Maubeuge, and likewise enclosed in new shrines;] can be understood enough and more than enough; nor are documents of the twelfth century lacking for this matter. For in this century, when it had advanced to its sixty-first year, a notable translation of the relics of St. Aldegund was made, which Adrian, dean of St. Gaugericus and Provost of Maubeuge (see our Work at the 30th day of January, page 1051 and following), an eyewitness of the event, described, where he speaks thus of the relics of St. Gislenus brought to Maubeuge: There were brought also the bodies of SS. Gislenus and Waltrude with a great company of men and women. He determines the year of the event as 1161 in these words: Done at Maubeuge in the year of the incarnate Word MCLXI, in the IXth Indiction, etc.; and he says the day was the 8th before the Ides of June, that is the 6th day of the same month, now sacred to St. Norbert, which in that year fell on the IIIrd day of the week. Likewise another translation of the relics of St. Gislenus, that is their replacing from an old into a new and more becoming chest, was made in the eightieth year of the same century, on the Kalends of June; of which our Excerpts from the monuments of Saint-Ghislain have thus: In the year of the Lord MCLXXX, on the Kalends of June, the translation of the body of St. Guislenus, of St. Sulpicius and of blessed Leocadia, virgin and martyr, was made by the Lord Roger, bishop of Cambrai, through the care of the lord Lambert, abbot of Cella; of which moreover mention is made by Molanus in the Additions to Usuard, Canisius, Du Saussay, Wion, Dorgan, the Writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, volume 3, page 16 of the Instruments, from the letters of Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai, and Philippe Brasseur in the Aquila Gisleniana from the very Letters of bishop Roger. Raisse, Belgica Christiana, page 130 and following, exhibits the act of visitation found in the shrine of St. Gislenus, couched in these words: In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty, the concurrent being two, the epact twenty-two, in the thirteenth Indiction, the fourth moon, on Sunday the twentieth before the Kalends of June, the body of Gislenus, priest of Christ, was translated into the chamber of this shrine by the Lord Roger, bishop of the see of Cambrai, Pope Alexander residing in the Apostolic see, and Frederick also ruling the rights of the Roman people, abbot Lambert too assenting according to rule, with the throng of his subjects.

[76] and then by Cambrai's In the thirteenth century, when Joanna, countess of Hainaut, had occupied the possessions of Saint-Ghislain through her men, the relics of St. Gislenus were moved from their place, and laid on the ground, as was also wont to be done elsewhere, until in the 38th year of the same century (according to others the 36th) they were brought back to their former place and again exposed to public veneration not without pomp: concerning which matter the Excerpts just praised have thus: In the year of the Lord MCCXXXVIII, on the day before the Ides of August, Joanna, countess of Flanders and Hainaut, and Godfrey, bishop of Cambrai, with much reverence and pomp raised up the body of St. Guislenus, which had been placed on the ground because the countess had placed mansores in the courts of the abbey. Mansores are those who remain in some place. The basilica of Saint-Ghislain perished by fire in the year 1151 on the 8th day before the Ides of May: the one which now exists was begun to be built by Lambert in the year 1183; to which there was afterwards added the chapel of St. Gislenus, above whose altar Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai, deposited the greatest part of the relics of St. Gislenus in a silver chest in the year 1491 on the 15th day of January, an arm being separated from the rest of the Saint's body. In the year MCCCCLXXXXI, say the Writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana praised a little before, Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai, visited the relics of St. Gislenus, which (he found) whole, one arm taken away, which is shown daily to pilgrims to be kissed, in the presence of Jean, abbot of St. Gislenus, and very many neighbouring abbots, and translated them into a new chapel: concerning all which things he gave letters: from which we learn that the same had formerly been visited by Roger, bishop of Cambrai, in the year MCLXXX. Those Writers make no mention in this place of Dom Quentin Benoist, abbot of St. Gislenus: on the contrary Philippe Brasseur, relating the same things in the Aquila Gisleniana, mentions Quentin alone: but the praised Writers of Gallia Christiana teach in the series of the abbots of Saint-Ghislain that Quentin was a partner to Jean, and, while the latter survived, bore the whole burden of the abbey, so that the event happened in the time of both: Quentin, however, playing the chief part in this business, concerning whom our Excerpts have thus: In his time the relics of Bl. Ghuislenus were visited by Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai, and translated from the high altar, which is situated in the choir of the church, into the chapel which had been built by him in the front part in honour of the same confessor of Christ.

[77] The Acts of this visitation, in Raisse, page 170 and following of the Belgica Christiana, have thus: prelates In the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and ninety-one, in the tenth Indiction, on the fifteenth day of the month of January, namely the Sunday after the Octave of the Kings, Pope Innocent VIII sitting, Frederick being emperor, and his son Maximilian king of the Romans, and his son Philip archduke of Austria, Burgundy, Brabant, etc. We, Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai, have visited the relics of St. Gislenus, confessor of Christ, which, one arm taken away, which is shown daily to pilgrims to be kissed, we found whole; having called together Quentin, abbot of this monastery, Jean his predecessor, Pierre, abbot of Crespin, Jean, abbot of Saint-Denis-en-Broqueroie, Guillaume, abbot of Cambron, and Jean, abbot of Saint-Jean at Valenciennes; that the memory and reverence of the same Confessor of Christ might be held more celebrated, on the same day we dedicated a new chapel in honour of the same St. Gislenus, contiguous to the church, and translated the aforesaid relics into it: and we reconciled the church itself with the circuit of the cloister, and instituted anew, with indulgences, the feast of the Dedication, already abolished by age, to be celebrated every year thenceforth on the same day, namely the next Sunday after the Octave of the Kings. And the aforesaid relics had been visited by Roger, prelate of Cambrai, in the year of the Lord MCLXXX. All which things We, Henri, bishop of Cambrai, attest by the appending of our seal to these present acts of visitation, dedication and reconciliation, the Prior and community of the same monastery of St. Gislenus being present, and master Gilles Bricart and Jean Daubuille, Apostolic notaries, and a copious multitude of the people.

[78] The arm of St. Gislenus, which we saw above exposed separately to the veneration of the faithful, lost in the year 1581, visited from time to time, in which the heretics of Tournai invaded and plundered Saint-Ghislain on the day of the Nativity of Bl. Mary, the cenobites of Saint-Ghislain could not recover. But in the year 1586, as Philippe Brasseur writes in the Aquila Gisleniana, page 70, but in the year 1588, as the Excerpts have it, after the relics of the abbey of Cella had been visited by Louis de Berlaymont, archbishop of Cambrai, the other arm of St. Gislenus was exposed to the veneration of the faithful in place of the lost one. Philippe Brasseur praises the Acts of this Visitation, and says their beginning is couched in these words: Pope Sixtus the Fifth sitting. But since I do not have these at hand, I set here the words in which what has just been said is related in our Excerpts. They run thus: After the decease of the said abbot Jerome (Lietart) in the year MDLXXXVIII, in the month of November of the same year, on the 10th day of the month, the relics of the monastery of St. Gislenus were visited by the most reverend and most illustrious lord Louis de Berlaymont, archbishop of Cambrai, in the presence of the venerable men the Rev. Dom Jean du Maisni, abbot of Crespin, Valérien du Flos, canon of Cambrai, and dom Jean Hazart, Prior, and the whole community of the same place. Then, by the counsel of the same most illustrious lord and with the assent of the whole community of the brethren, his second arm was separated from the body of blessed Guislenus, which, put back in place of the lost one, is now given to pilgrims to be kissed. Jerome Lietart, according to the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, left the fillets of Saint-Ghislain together with his life in the year 1586 on the 3rd day of September. But since the aforesaid visitation is said to have been performed in the same year in which he died, we must here stand by Philippe Brasseur, who binds it to the said year 1586 from the Acts of the same visitation, which he praises.

[79] and in the sixteenth century brought back from Mons to Saint-Ghislain, Amand d'Anvin repaired the damage inflicted on the basilica of Cella by the heretics; and, imitating him, Gaspard Boussu ordered two chests of silver, very artfully worked, to be made, in one of which the head of St. Gislenus, in the other the rest of his body, should be enclosed: into the latter François Vanderburch put most of the relics of St. Gislenus in the year 1626 on the day of St. Luke, and into the other the head of St. Gislenus

Jacques Ghelneur, abbot of Crespin — which is situated between Mons, Valenciennes and Saint-Ghislain — brought in with solemn rite in the year 1628 on the day sacred to St. John the Evangelist; as is to be seen in the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, volume 3, in the Series of the abbots of Saint-Ghislain, and in Philippe Brasseur. Finally, in the seventeenth century the torch of war, spread far and wide as the French and Spaniards contended among themselves, was carried into Hainaut also, at which time the relics of SS. Gislenus, Waltrude and Aldegund were exposed for veneration against the calamities of war in the collegiate church of the noble ladies. But in the year 1647, when the mass of the war seemed to have been carried elsewhere, Landrecies having been recovered by the archduke Leopold, governor of Belgium, the relics of St. Gislenus returned with the greatest pomp to their own seat by the counsel and care of Dom Augustin Crulay, abbot, on the 3rd day of October, that is the Sunday preceding the feast of St. Gislenus, as our Excerpts from the Ms. of Saint-Ghislain set out more widely. From these it is clear enough how celebrated the cult of St. Gislenus has been for many centuries back; nay, they state that the multitude of men running together to his relics on his feast day was at one time so great that neither the neighbouring villages nor Saint-Ghislain itself sufficed to hold it.

[80] where also a confraternity was erected under his name. Nor are other notable documents of his sacred cult lacking: the chief families of the nobility in Hainaut counted it an honour to themselves if they offered themselves of their own accord to St. Gislenus at his principal altar. Indeed they also gave freedom to slaves on this condition, that every year on the day sacred to St. Gislenus, and again when they entered into matrimony, they should pay some tribute; and that when they departed this life, the best thing they left of their movables should become the property of the monastery of Cella: but the condition of those who devoted themselves of their own accord on this compact to the service of St. Gislenus was afterwards changed, and they first coalesced into a certain confraternity which was called that of Charity, and was confirmed in the year 1120 by the authority of Burchard, bishop of Cambrai, and in the year 1123 by that of Calixtus II, supreme Pontiff. It was afterwards called that of St. Gislenus, in which, besides very many princely men, Philip IV, king of Spain, wished to be enrolled with his wife and the Infante, and Urban VIII granted ample favours in the year 1625, as will be plain to one consulting his Bull on that matter, which, translated into French, Dom Jérôme Marlier, abbot of Saint-Ghislain, subjoined to the Life of St. Gislenus. Finally, the students of the University of Louvain called the Lilienses were accustomed to venerate his feast with solemn rite as that of their Patron, as our Notices of Saint-Ghislain testify.

LIFE OF ST. GISLENUS, CONFESSOR,

By an anonymous author

From Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, page 790 and following.

Gislenus, conf., at Ursidongus, now Saint-Ghislain, in Hainaut. (S.)

BHL Number: 3552

By an Anonymous author.

PROLOGUE.

The Author invokes the Holy Spirit. I think it opportune for us, dearest Brethren, and very fitting, to deliver to your ears some things from the examples of the holy Fathers, albeit in unskilled speech. But mindful of my unskilfulness, I fear to undertake a work which St. Jerome ^b, the Holy Spirit acting, accomplished. Although I am unworthy of so great a work, yet it is credibly to be known that the Lord said to the man thinking and acting rightly: "Open thy mouth, and I will fill it ^c." I therefore suppliantly beseech the Holy Spirit, who has remained in the hearts of the elect, and invoke his breath with the whole intention of my mind, that, as he inspired the sense of a brute animal to speak ^d, so he may fill the hollow of my palate with the sweetness of sweet-sounding speech, whereby I may be able to render the hearts of the hearers attentive, and to admonish them to praise the Lord with manifold voice, that they may resound * with me unceasingly. But what am I, so little and wretched? What can I, almost tongueless, worthily unfold about the friends of God, who, obedient to the Lord's precepts, have followed the footsteps of Christ with unwearied vows of soul? For it is worthy and just that the discourse begun should unfold to you him of whom I long to speak.

ANNOTATA.

* perstrepant

CHAPTER I.

St. Gislenus comes from Greece to Rome, thence into Belgium, and founds a monastery at Ursidongus.

The Saint, having spurned the splendour of his birth, a monk The venerable priest Gislenus, then, was sprung ^a of the Attic race, from parents renowned according to the glory of the world, shining with Christian nobility: whose popular pomp the Boy of good disposition held of no account, but rejoicing in the poverty of Christ, he sought with noble mind how he might please the supreme King. Handed over, then, to teachers of the liberal arts and fully imbued with them, he afterwards studied philosophy at Athens, the most noble city of the Greeks, which bestowed on the tongues of all nations the flowers of all eloquence ^b. Abundantly taught, therefore, in this secular study, and weighing that there was nothing in it of the true Divinity whereby he might be able to drive out the darkness of ignorance, he handed himself over to be educated by masters of sacred Scripture. Raised, then, under these auspices from boyhood to manly strength, he deemed it worthy — that it would not be pleasing enough to God if he bound himself in the service of the Almighty by the spontaneous will of his heart, and that it was more equitable to be subject to the institutes of the elders. And indeed, entering a monastery, he observed bravely according to rule the norm of St. Basil. Where, like a prudent bee, he added the honeys of diverse virtues into the shell of his inmost mind, giving to elders and juniors examples of huge humility and obedience. For, full of the charism of the virtues, he could say with the Psalmist: "How sweet are thy words to my palate, O Lord, more than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth ^c."

[3] [and made a priest, he goes to Rome; thence, making for Gaul by divine command, he begins to found an oratory,] Crowned, then, with the nectar of justice, the venerable Gislenus was promoted to the ecclesiastical Orders. Being now made a priest, an unspeakable love of God and of the Saints came into his heart, as he turned over in mind how he might be instructed by the examples of the just of former times. Deliberating such things indeed with simple heart, he remembered that the most holy martyr of Christ Dionysius had of old gone out from Athens and gone to Rome on the business of visiting the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul, who, already martyred, had ascended to heaven. Animated by the example of this witness of God ^d, and by the kindly exhortation of the abbot of the monastery and of all the brethren, going out from the place he made for Rome for the sake of prayers: where also, having stayed very long in prayers to God and at the places of the Saints, he is warned by a divine voice that, coming into Gaul, he should seek the district of Haynau and build in it an oratory in honour of Peter and Paul, and, serving God there, await the goal of his life. Exulting, therefore, at such a vision, he undertakes the journey, making for the province of Gaul, not unequal to that supreme Patriarch to whom it was said, the old Scripture testifying: "Go forth out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee ^e." And penetrating Gaul of France with two disciples, Lambert and Bellerius, having gone through cities and regions everywhere, the excellent Father Gislenus at length one day reached the district of Haynau: and having also wholly viewed its villages and monasteries, he heard the report spread abroad telling many and astounding things of the blessed prelate Amand. For setting out to him, greeting each other together in conversation, and then speaking of the things that are God's, the venerable president lets the venerable Gislenus depart. For thus the prelate of God ^f Gislenus came to the place which is called Castrilocus ^g: where indeed, judging that it was the place which had been told him divinely, he began with all his strength to root out thorns and thistles and every harmful thing, desiring to build himself a little cell in which he might serve God as a handmaid.

[4] At the same time the renowned king Dagobert ^h was administering the monarchy of the whole kingdom of the Franks, [and when Dagobert, pursuing a she-bear in the hunt, comes upon him at Castrilocus;] but he was then in the district of Brabant ⁱ for the sake of hunting. For which reason, one day, as they were traversing for this business the wilderness adjoining the river Haine, the dogs, coming upon it, roused a huge she-bear, which with swift course made for the place where the aforesaid prelate Gislenus was intent on his toilsome labour, and hid herself under the Saint's garments, which were hanging from a tree: and the dogs, following her on the track, by no means dared even to come near her. And the hunters too, coming up weary, perceiving that the dogs did not dare to approach nearer, almost rose up against the Servant of God and his disciples, reproaching them with words and cudgels, and called them magicians and sorcerers, by whose enchantment the dogs, stupefied, did not dare to seize the beast. Meanwhile the aforesaid king, coming up, ordered his men to be quiet, and, turning to the man of God Gislenus, said: Tell us who you are, and why you and these who are with you have harmed our dogs by enchanting? But blessed Gislenus answered him thus, undaunted: We have by no means hurt your dogs; the beast which you seek rests in that place; if it please you, king, take her, for we in no way need her, but we need the mercy of God. The king, perceiving heavenly power in the Man, withdrew with the dogs, the beast resting under the shade of the hanging garments.

[5] While St. Gislenus with his own was intent, then, on the work begun, but his garments having been carried off by the she-bear, an eagle going before, the she-bear rose, and, having seized the holy Man's basket, in which was his mystery ^k, which he used in the sacred solemnities of the Masses, went out step by step. Seeing which the blessed Man groaned vehemently, saying: O God of immense piety, be present to a poor wretch; repay what thou hast kept for me through malign realms. Saying such things, blessed Gislenus took the way with his own after the beast carrying the basket in her mouth: and behold, a great eagle flies to meet him, offering itself as guide to the Saint going after the beast, and, as it flew gradually and now and then waited again, he perceived that it had come from heaven for his sake: and following it without doubt as far as the open fields, when the eagle had betaken itself to the lofty air, he inquires of the keepers of cattle whom he found whether they had seen a beast carrying something and going off through the thickets of the glade. To whom the shepherds say: Behold, she hastens before you, carrying as it were some garment in her mouth. Hearing this too, the kindly Man ran after the beast, and found her in a thicket which was then called Ursidongus, so called because that same she-bear was accustomed to nurse her cubs there: but now it is called by the name of Cella. And the cubs, holding the basket brought by their mother, were playing with it with mouth and arms. Having recovered, therefore, the garment unstained, St. Gislenus commanded the beast with her young, by the word of God, to return at once to the remote woods, and to harm no man or beast any further in that district. Obedient indeed, the beast withdrew at the Saint's word, and thereafter harmed no one in those places ^l. O men far more wicked than beasts, who, alas, spurn not only the words of the Saints but even of the Almighty.

Behold, the pious and gentle Man commands, the cruel and ungentle beast obeys: O man, for whose sake all things were made, attending to such things, subject yourself to the Creator, and every creature will obey you. Setting these things aside, let us speak of all things in order.

[6] [He comes to Ursidongus, and, having begun an oratory there, is summoned by St. Autbert:] Gislenus, worthy to be honoured, rejoicing indeed over the sacred vesture and the place destined for him by God, having taken axes and mattocks, began with his aforesaid companions to clear the place, to tear up the thorn-bushes and brambles from the foundations. And the soil having been cleansed of all harmful trees, he resolved first to build a basilica in honour of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, as had been divinely commanded him. For this praiseworthy Exile was adorned with the flowers of all skill, watchful in prayers, outstanding in hospitality, excellent in frugality, bountiful to the poor, and wholly adorned with the grace of all the virtues. Whence, as the Apostle says, "We are the good odour of Christ ^m," the repute of his holiness, spread through the common people, reached as far as the see of the kindly prelate Autbert ⁿ. To which repute the holy bishop would not at once assent, because he knew it was written: "Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God ^o," and that saying: "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good [p]." And so, a messenger having been sent, St. Autbert, prelate of the people of Cambrai, commanded him not to delay to come as quickly as possible to the tribunal of his authority. Gladly obeying the pontifical precept indeed, he set out to go to the city. And when, as Phoebus was seeking the shadows of the earth, he came to a villa whose name is Racemus [q], he found, after long and much seeking, a man who gave him lodging.

[7] returning from whom he rescues a woman in labour from danger of death, The Saint rested there for the night indeed, and in the morning, as he was about to depart, the host asked him, saying: Father, as I judge, the works which you do are pleasing to God: therefore I humbly beseech your goodness that after your conference with the bishop you deign to return to me. Which St. Gislenus also did not disdain to do. For coming to the city of Cambrai [r], he was presented to the holy bishop Autbert, whom the bishop thus addresses, saying: Tell us, brother, of what country you are, or of what dignity? St. Gislenus answered: I am a Greek by race, but a Christian by dignity. Born, namely, and brought up at Athens, reborn by the baptism of Christ: so, going to Rome, I came by the precept of God into this country. In the district of Haynau on the river Haine, in the place which is called Ursidongus, I work with my hands, longing to build an oratory to God in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul. I desired indeed to seek your holiness, to ask leave to carry out the things begun: but your grace, which summoned me, has anticipated it. And the kindly bishop, having considered the words of the just Man and finding nothing reprehensible in them, loved him and dismissed him with a blessing to depart, asking that he complete the work of God which he had begun, and promised that when he heard it was completed he would bless it.

[8] and completes the work begun, Gislenus, rightly to be honoured, having then returned, came to his faithful host in the villa of Racemus, and his wife was very sick and labouring on account of childbirth: for which reason the religious host had the holy Man lodge becomingly in another house. Moreover, his wife's infirmity growing more grievous, the man hastens very quickly to the Saint, his face bathed with tears, saying: Servant of God, help my wife, who is now about to die, and do not disdain to beseech the mercy of God for her who is drawing her last breath. The Servant of God, pitying his weeping, said to him with prophetic voice: Put away, man, all sadness, for when you return home you will find your wife safe, a boy having been born. And the man, though sad, returning home at once, received a twofold joy from his wife in health, just as he had heard the Nursling of Christ speak with living voice. St. Gislenus indeed received the boy that was born from the sacred font, and that man, for such great benefits conferred on him through the blessed Prophet, handed over to his kindly Co-father whatever was of his right in the villa of Racemus, for the work of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, for whom he was making an oratory. Having returned, moreover, the Witness of God completed the basilica at Cella [s] which he had begun.

[9] The aforesaid king Dagobert [t], then, after a long time was making his way near the Saint's Cella: Dagobert helping. but because the way was difficult on account of the marshes for those going to it, the Saint, having taken sanctified water, with a censer with incense and the holy Gospel, hastens to meet the king, knowing that it is written: "Be ye subject to every human creature for God's sake, whether it be to the king as excelling [u]." And the king, looking at the holy Prophet, recognized him, asking him: What do you wish, Beloved of God? The Saint said to him: I am an exile and a pilgrim, my lord king, and I came into these parts from a far land, that is from Athens, the most noble city of the Greeks, assuredly by the command of God: I now earnestly beg your charity that you deign to bestow on our little place something of your royal possession, whence those serving God in it may have some sustenance, and may be able to supplicate continually the eternal emperor Christ for the safety of the king. Lending his ear gladly, therefore, to the request of St. Gislenus, the king handed over to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul the aforesaid little place, which is now called Cella, and whatever there is round about it of woods, waters, and other things suitable to the same place, and moreover the villa of Hornu [x] with all its appurtenances. And these having been given lawfully with a cheerful mind, the king went his way joyfully. Rendered more eager by such royal solace too, the praiseworthy man Gislenus gave thanks to Him who accomplishes all things with kindly governance.

ANNOTATA.

c. Psalm 18, verse 103.

p. 1 to the Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 20.

q. In French Roisin, between Saint-Ghislain and the town of Le Quesnoy.

r. A city of Belgium on the river Scheldt, now distinguished by an archbishopric.

s. Which had formerly been called Ursidongus, as it were the Lair of the she-bear.

t. See letter h and number 42 of the Prelim. Comment.

u. 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 13.

x. A village near Saint-Ghislain, concerning which more at number 48 of the Prelim. Comm.

CHAPTER II.

He has the oratory of SS. Peter and Paul dedicated: he entices St. Waltrude and her daughters, and her sister Aldegund, to the monastic life, and dies piously.

He has the oratory dedicated, and to St. Waltrude The oratory having been completed, the kindly prelate Gislenus suggested to the lord bishops Autbert and Amand that they should come and bless it with pontifical authority. Which the venerable bishops also venerably did, with a huge concourse of peoples ^a. At that time too there was a certain noble man, Madelgarius by name, who was afterwards called Vincent, in the palace of the aforesaid king, whose wife, a blood-relation of the king, was named Waltrude ^b. And this Madelgarius, God inspiring him, and pricked by the admonitions of the aforesaid holy prelates, having received the tonsure of the head at the hands of St. Autbert, humbly shut himself up in Hautmont ^c under the norm of St. Benedict, which he happily kept to the end. But his wife, blessed Waltrude, living in secular habit, nobly ruled the children and estates conferred on her by her lord. But indeed, lest the wife of so great a man should be mocked by the doings of the world, the priest of the Lord Gislenus is taught by a divine voice to visit her and with sweet address to encourage her in good, that, having renounced the pomps of the world, she might follow the example of her husband, now celibate for the Lord. The Saint indeed going away exhorted her abundantly with loving and heavenly doctrine. Having heard, then, the teachings of the excellent father Gislenus, the servant of Christ Waltrude said that she by no means wished to live in the glory of the world, but did not know where or how she should bind herself to the service of God. After admonitions of this sacred kind, the handmaid of God Waltrude saw in a vision as it were that she entered the church which is in the villa of Buxutum ^d, and St. Gaugericus the bishop ^e, looking on her cheerfully, gave her a cup full of the best wine, saying: Do what you are doing, for the things you do please God and me. By which vision, like must fermenting in a skin, so the follower of Christ, pricked by the grace of the holy spirit, began to burn in the service of God, saying to the heavenly Spouse with the Psalmist: "Thy cup that inebriateth, how goodly is it ^f." And when she had also simply made known this vision to some of her handmaids, as is wont to be the way with such persons, they, comparing the vision among themselves jestingly, it reached the ignoble ears of the common people. Which the Lord's word forbids to be done, speaking in the Gospel: "Cast not your pearls before swine ^g." For after the manner of swine the stolid and ignoble common people, deriding as it were with grunting, accuse the words and works of the just.

[11] Whence also, the common enemy sowing, some began calumniously to speak of the servant of Christ otherwise than the matter stood. is the author that, having founded at Castrilocus Dismayed over these things, therefore, the handmaid of God, as being still rude in faith, taught by an angelic admonition in sleep, at once laid aside her useless grief. After this, St. Gislenus coming to her again, the same Saint made known to him the vision which she had seen, and that she had narrated it with simple mind to her handmaids, and that many had disparaged her, and also that she had been refreshed by an angelic visitation in a vision. Having heard these things, St. Gislenus said to her humbly: So mystical a vision of God you ought to have revealed to spiritual men, who would know how to instruct you worthily, not to secular little women given to the world. Now therefore, what I have often suggested to you, do not delay to do, but with your whole mind turn yourself to the service of God. I will show you, then, what you should do. For in the first place, when I reached these parts, seeking where I might live and be able to serve God, I found a wooded hill, so suitable, if it were cleared, for those desiring to serve God: buy it, then, if you can, and build there dwellings for yourself and your followers. And leading her there, he showed it.

[12] The place indeed pleased St. Waltrude, and by the counsel of St. Gislenus she sent to the venerable man Hildulf ^h, a monastery, she should receive the sacred veil, whose wife Aya ⁱ was a blood-relation of the saint, beseeching him that a house should be built for her on the hill shown to her, where she might serve her Creator day and night. And the venerable Hildulf, coming, made very glad over a commission of this kind, bought the place from its possessors, and built on the summit of the hill an exceedingly lofty house. And when the handmaid of God had gone to see the dwelling prepared for her, she shrank from its loftiness, the poor little one of Christ not wishing to inhabit a proud dwelling. The heavenly Artificer, attending to her humility, on the following night sent a strong wind with hail and overturned that house from the foundations. The aforesaid man Hildulf too, having heard what had happened, returned to the place, and, as the Saint had learned through St. Gislenus, she showed him the place which the Saint had begun to clear, and there, the harmful trees having been cut away by the roots, a house was rebuilt for her on the side of the hill, and an oratory in honour of the holy Apostles ^k. The holy Priest of God Gislenus, therefore, wholly the most prudent counsellor of St. Waltrude, exhorted her to set out to the kindly pontiff Autbert, that by his authority she might receive the garments of an innocent life: which she also gladly did ^l. Having received, then, the sacred veils, she presently delivered herself and all her possessions to divine doings, showing everywhere examples of her holiness to many. The glorious father Gislenus, perceiving indeed that she was strengthened in all things in her holy purpose, rejoiced greatly; because what he had long desired in her * he beheld with his own eyes.

[13] For the rest, the Saint admonished the Saint concerning her sister Aldegund ^m, a little maiden, that she should gain her too * for God as herself, and he takes care that the same be persuaded to St. Aldegund, and should not neglect her daughters either, but consecrate them to God, namely Aldetrude ⁿ and Madelberta ^o. And indeed, the Divinity inspiring, and St. Waltrude suggesting, and the kindly-flowing father Gislenus shining forth, the kindly Aldegund betook herself to the service of God in the monastery of Maubeuge [p], which had perhaps been left to her from the inheritance of her father [q] and mother [r] as against her niece Gertrude [s]. Where also, an oratory and other dwellings having been built, the virgin Aldegund went to visit her sister on the hill of Castrilocus. And she, sympathizing with her sister's poverty, tried to exhort her that, leaving that place, she should go to hers, which had a greater and better attendance of men-servants and maid-servants. To whom St. Waltrude said: I prefer to serve God in this place, though needy, through the days of my life, than to go where you urge: for God everywhere will not suffer me to perish of hunger. "The rich indeed," as the Psalmist says, "have wanted and have suffered hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good [t]." I shall enjoy, namely, as long as I live, this place which the divine mercy destined for me through his servant Gislenus. Return, then, with your kinswomen, O sweet sister, nourishing them according to rule. And she went away and withdrew with God as her companion.

[14] whose death he foretells, and the beneficence, At that time the holy pontiff Amand, the course of his labour being consummated, rendered his spirit, laden with heavenly riches, to the eternal King. Whom the holy virgin Aldegund saw in a vision crowned with a heavenly diadem by the same King, the Lord of kings [u]. Which vision indeed she would relate to none of the girls living with her, but, having sent a messenger to the man of God Gislenus, she asked that he come with her sister for the sake of visiting her. And as they came, the holy virgin ran to meet them at the place which is called Meinrivus [x], and, greeting each other mutually, they spoke of heavenly things, exulting. Then the kindly Aldegund made known the vision to them. To whom the venerable Gislenus said: Because you have deserved, O little maiden, to see God crowning the soul of his friend, know for certain that it was shown to you not on account of him who was being crowned, but on account of yourself, who are still in the contest. And know that the end of the present life is imminent for you: therefore, I ask, strengthen yourself steadfastly in the work of God, begging his mercy that he send some affliction on you, through which, rendered more purified, you may be rewarded everlastingly with St. Amand. Which holy virgin indeed, fulfilling the words of the Gospel which says: "He that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life eternal [y]," asked afflictions of God and deserved to obtain them. For in her right breast the disease of cancer arose. Which affliction she vehemently loved, because she knew it would profit her if she bore it patiently, which she did to the end. Exchanging, then, very sweet words among themselves, the aforesaid sisters with St. Gislenus the confessor decreed by common counsel that the Cella of the aforesaid Man of God should at all times be joined to the monastery of the kindly Aldegund: which so remains to this day. They also decreed that the abbots or abbesses of the monastery of Maubeuge should be at hand in all necessities to the abbot and brethren dwelling at the Cella of St. Gislenus, and should build a bridge by which the faithful people might go to pray at the aforesaid place: because, as is known, the way by which one goes to that Cella is impassable on account of the marshes. And these things which are said were confirmed by the precept of king Charles the Great in the time of Elephans, abbot of that place [z].

[15] Meanwhile St. Gislenus, returning with the kindly Waltrude, came into the villa of Frameries [aa], as also of her sister Waltrude experienced, which the same Saint had bought, and she gave one part of it to the holy man, saying: Receive, servant of God, a part of this my possession, whence you may have the means of living with your companions. So they returned to their own. Absolutely no one can tell of how great charity St. Gislenus and the servant of God Waltrude were, and which they kept even to the last of their old age. For through old age neither of them was now able to visit the other, whence by common counsel they decreed that an oratory should be built in the villa of Quaregnon [bb] in honour of St. Quentin the martyr, and there they were accustomed to meet for the sake of conversation. Which oratory too she handed over to Gislenus for the work of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, for refreshing the needy, whom the aforesaid Prelate [cc] loved above gold and topaz for the love of Christ, desiring to hear that honey-flowing voice of the Lord on the day of the last examination: "As long as you did it to one of these my least, you did it to me [dd]."

[16] But truly there are further and innumerable things which the report of the peoples relates of this most holy man Gislenus, he dies, and is buried in the oratory of the holy Apostles which he had founded, or which can with difficulty be made out in very ancient little charters [ee]: in which nevertheless it is found how assiduous he was in prayer, intent on sacred vigils, conspicuous for frugality, content with the reality of poverty, beloved by the needy, and filled with all the virtues of God. When therefore the King of the ages had decreed to repay him the palm of perennial glory for the struggle of his labour, full of days and graces, having left the world, which he manfully conquered through the fear of God, he rendered his spirit, wearied with divine services, to his Creator [ff], who lives and reigns for ages of ages. Whose blessed obsequies his disciples venerably attending, they buried the most holy body with huge honour in the basilica of the most blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, where divine benefits are furnished, his worthy merits intervening, to the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the holy Spirit abides eternity, majesty and dominion through the spaces of all times. Amen.

[17] In which place the body of the aforesaid St. Gislenus rested through many courses of years, where his body rested, until Elefans built another. until the Great king Charles granted the aforesaid place to be kept to a certain abbot, his kinsman, by name Elefans, and an oratory to be built loftier and more beautiful, in which the same Saint was resting. And this having been built more honourably, the same noble abbot asked Halydgar [gg], bishop of the people of Cambrai, to come and consecrate it in the Catholic manner. The bishop, then, coming, said that it ought not to be blessed while the body of some Saint or some relics of the Saints remained within [hh]. And having taken counsel together, raising the limbs of the Blessed man, they carried them outside the oratory of the monastery, hiding them behind the apse and the window of the altar, the abbot Elefans desiring afterwards to bring them back inside. The basilica, therefore, was blessed in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul and of the other Saints, on the eighth day before the Kalends of August, in the time of king Louis, the offspring of the renowned Charles [ii]. The abbot having then inquired of the bishop what ought to be done with the most sacred body, the bishop is said to have answered: Let the Saint rest there until the mercy of God deign to reveal his merits more manifestly to all men. The clod of the Saint indeed rested there many years on account of the frequency of the pagans [kk] and the sluggishness of the elders, until the place returned to the wasteness of a desert [ll].

ANNOTATA.

f. Psalm 22, verse 5.

l. About the year 654.

p. Maubeuge is a town of Belgium on the river Sambre.

q. Walbert's.

r. Bertila's.

s. Abbess of Nivelles.

t. Psalm 33, verse XI.

u. Not living, but dead. See the Prelim. Comm., number 53 and following.

x. Maririeu near Maubeuge.

y. John 12, verse 25.

z. See what was said of him at number 56 and following of the Prelim. Comm.

aa. There is a village of almost this name near Mons in Hainaut.

bb. In the neighbourhood of the village of Frameries just mentioned.

cc. See letter f in the Annotations on chapter 1.

dd. Matt. 25, verse 40.

ee. Here are the monuments which our anonymous writer alone used.

ff. About the year, as appears, 681, or not much later. See the Prelim. Comm., number 54.

gg. Or Halitgar.

hh. Concerning the ancient rite of consecrating churches, and the cause why Halitgar would not consecrate the church of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul unless the body of St. Gislenus were removed from it, see the Prelim. Comment., number 58.

ii. Perhaps in the year 818. See the Prelim. Comment., number 58.

kk. The Normans laid waste Hainaut about the years 881 and 898. See the Preliminary Commentary, number 4.

ll. Gather hence that the anonymous writer wrote toward the end of the ninth century or the beginning of the following.

* Perhaps in ea?

* Perhaps ipsam?

THE FINDING AND MIRACLES OF ST. GISLENUS,

Written by an anonymous author, a disciple of St. Gerard, in the tenth century.

Gislenus, conf., at Ursidongus, now Saint-Ghislain, in Hainaut. (S.)

BHL Number: 3554

By an Anonymous author.

The relics of St. Gislenus, buried in deep oblivion, After the many contests which the confessor of the Lord Ghyslenus had contended in spiritual combat, the world looking on, after the long struggles ^a by which the warrior had tortured his own body by mortifying it, at length, his course consummated, his spirit victorious, taken out of the world, he is transferred into the rest of the Saints, to be joined to the Lord: because Him for whom he had thirsted faithfully thus far by contemplating, he had now obtained the grant of enjoying without the mist of the fleshly mass. Further, the frame of his body, received long ago into the bosom of the earth, lay covered and hidden ^b: for, our sins demanding it, so great a Patron, who would have been of profit to mortals, was absent from open view; to him indeed the hastening * joys of paradise are happily rendered in recompense for his labours, but his patronage was hitherto miserably hidden from those mourning in the vale of weeping, so concealed by the much revolving of the gliding years that now even his very merits became as it were unknown: the place too in which he had led his tearful days, which was a paradisiacal pleasantness to the man of God, was now, through the neglect of those presiding, being reduced almost to a lair of wild beasts in its former desert state [c], but not for ever. This oblivion was brought about for a time; nor did the divine mercy suffer the merits of its servant to lie hid any longer asleep, but rather to bestow on all the faithful who seek them the benefits of his intercessions, and his life as an example.

[2] This, then, is done or made public at a fitting time, about the year 929, nay one pleasing to the heavenly regard, namely when Henry, king of the Saxons, was bearing the distinguished sceptres of Austrasian France or Germany ^d, Ghislebert being duke or consul of the same regions ^e, so that the celebrated name of the famous miracle might be published more widely through princes of famous name; at length in those days a certain priest, Teutfrid by name, had received by succession the aforesaid place in which the venerable man, having built a basilica, had directed that he be buried — which was then called Ursidoncus, and now obtains the name of the Cella of St. Ghyslenus — to fulfil there the priestly duty, namely the office of his grade, and had appointed a lodging for himself in the nearest villa, which is called by the name of Hornu [f]: for the place of that monastery seemed so secret or inaccessible that through the horror of its solitude it even became uninhabitable. It had indeed some time before been repaired into a better state by the zeal of a certain abbot named Elephans ^g, but, he having departed and the inhabitants having been removed, it was returning into its ancient solitude.

[3] The priest, then, making his stay there, people began to flock to him from remote parts of diverse regions, are discovered, not without a revelation or apparition going before, confessing that it had been signified to them that the limbs of the demigod Ghyslenus lay buried in the often-mentioned monastery, and ought to be translated from the place of burial. And since the place of the sepulchre was unknown to them, and the priest, giving no credit at all, negligently passed over what had been told him, the matter, by the divine nod, so appeared capable of belief that the very place where the tomb had been was made evidently clear by a miracle done there from heaven. For from the villa of Tiedeias ^h, which seems to be on the borders of the region, one of the countrymen, deprived of the keenness of his eyes, Becherus by name, heard by revelation that he should go with solicitous visitation to the church of St. Peter, that is the Cella, in which St. Ghyslenus rested; and when he at once obeyed, it happened that he was there by night, the doors of the church being barred; this necessity compelling him, he remained watchful before the wall on the side of the East: as morning dawned, he was seized with excessive pain in the eyeballs themselves, and when he looked for water, from that which he had chanced to draw from the ground, collected in hollows, he soothed them, lightly touched, and presently, the mist wiped away, recovered the former light of his eyes. The priest, still distrustful, puts off the matter by the counsel of other priests.

[4] are discovered, Further, the venerable Servant of the Lord, who living had always been zealous for the place of humility, even dead delights in the help of the lowliest, and requires those to become his helpers to whom he remembers he afforded the solace of benefit in this life. For a man dwelling in the neighbourhood, Winerad by name, was leading a religious life, though in secular habit, who, born of what was once his clientele, is twice admonished by the blessed Man himself to raise the bones from the place of the sepulchre; and when he, uncertain and hesitating, doubted to proceed, he is shaken by a terrible threat as he appeared a third time, a certain day having been designated for doing this, so that, terrified by the horror of the vision, he at once rose up, and, going hastily with the priest to the place shown him in the vision, began to dig with the utmost effort. Nor is he rendered without result in sweating at this, but presently, digging deep, he found the sacred pledges ⁱ, and bringing them out with great reverence wrapped them in a clean linen cloth. This is done on the day long since designated for him, the day before the Kalends of October, which, dedicated to the blessed angel Michael and to the host of all the blessed heavenly virtues, is reverently commemorated throughout the world. And that the merit of the holy Man might be made manifest, such sweetness of nectarous odour was spread abroad, the peoples looking on, that it surpassed the fragrance of spices, and the mouths of all, loosed in the praise of God, unanimously resounded the glory of God for such great glorification of his servant; which odour of most pleasing fragrance remained until the body was translated on the fifteenth day into the oratory which had been dedicated in memory of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. For the priests who were present did not dare to presume so great a work by themselves ^k, but, it having been placed in the same place under diligent custody and worthy reverence, they hasten to make it known to Stephen, bishop of Cambrai [l], to whose diocese it belonged, who, hearing such great wonders, rejoicing with them, rendered thanks to God, ready presently to hasten his journey there and translate the holy body most preciously; but, the moment of a certain cause not to be passed over pressing upon him, he did not set out at all, but enjoined it to the archdeacon Gilbald to be executed faithfully. He, having gathered a multitude, translating the holy relics, laid them up in the aforesaid oratory.

[5] Thenceforth what great miracles the divine power showed in the veneration of its Nursling will be clear from what follows. and, stealthily carried off by the people of Maubeuge and restored; But it seems settled to conclude in brief sentences the discourse in praise of the holy Man and the narration of his virtues. This body, then, of the blessed Man, when the clerics and girls from the nearest monasteries of virgins, that is Maubeuge ^m or Castrilocus, in dissension, were coveting it, apparitions * having been secretly put forth by the former of them, they carry it off stealthily, troops of people meeting them having been disposed along the way, and convey it, not without ambition, into the church of the holy Mother of God; for the holy Man did not refuse to visit with lifeless body the place in which the merits of the virgin Aldegund ⁿ shine, he who as a skilful instructor had laboured that she might become a spouse of the King of heaven by the merit of chastity. Thereupon, when the priest, sacristan of the Cella of the blessed Man, and the neighbours round about, in suspense, are affected with excessive grief over the body carried off, the same appeared to some of them in a vision, consoling them and promising that he would quickly return, and at the same time warning that the people of Maubeuge should be called to account over this. These things, as they had been done, come to the knowledge of the church of Cambrai: and Stephen, whom we mentioned above, pontiff of the same, considering that the matter was proceeding to the peril of ecclesiastical right, decreed that it should be examined forthwith by himself; and, having set out to Maubeuge, calling the elders, he called them to account with episcopal authority. Thus, having taken back the clod of the holy body, he venerably replaced it, carrying it back with huge honour and the attendance of the peoples, in its own dwelling, which living he had consecrated with assiduous groaning ^o.

[6] Afterwards, God assenting, the merits of his servant intervening, it was decreed by the counsel of the princes but then entrusted to the Benedictines, with various, that there ought to be in the place distinguished by these benefits a company of the ecclesiastical order continually serving the heavenly Majesty. Therefore, the monastic Order having been instituted under the norm of the holy habit, the monastery itself is raised at length by greater virtues [p]. In it a certain girl named Dodrada [q], blind, suppliantly begging the merits of St. Ghyslenus, while she pleads standing attentively in the church, receives the health of her eyes. Likewise Fredelagus [r], while he suffers a similar affliction, seeking the benefit with equal devotion, deserves equal safety. What of that which was proved by eyes to have happened likewise to another girl [s]? She, called Albrada [t], while, dissolved by a bitter kind of sickness, she continued so useless in all her limbs, and, longing for the end of her life, was supplicating with loud cries that her soul might depart, Christ commanding, through the intercession of St. Ghyslenus; which was also granted, and at once the effect thundered forth *; for, having asked her father to have her carried to his church, he granted it; prostrate before the altar, persevering in this prayer, she paid the debt of death. There is no doubt that the intercession of him who could so easily obtain that her spirit be loosed from the body could have loosed the handwriting of her sins. Likewise, while one was deprived of the sight of his eyes and was standing behind the wall of the altar, while in the sacred celebration of the Mass the chapter of the saving Gospel was being pronounced, he obtained the sight long lost [u]. A boy from the neighbourhood had lost the function of hearing; coming to the memorial of the blessed Man, he deserved to be restored to his former health [x].

[7] A certain Haimeric [y], entirely deprived of the function of his eyes, at Saint-Ghislain while he faithfully begs health at the said memorial, deserved to be restored in the light he had lost. A woman named Ebrahaidis [z], punished with sickness of all her limbs, sees in a revelation the blessed Confessor promising her the benefit of health at a certain time; she, while she awaits the time noted, went to the basilica, offers the due gift of prayer and vow, and at length obtains the hoped-for suffrages. But however great a miracle it be to behold these wonders so many times in the place of the relics, yet it is known that greater things also often come about by his merits in remote parts. In the territory of Soissons a certain portion of a vineyard [bb] had once been handed over by the gift of the abbot Elephans [aa] to the Cella of the Confessor of Christ in the name of St. Peter the Apostle, but, the age of time compelling, it had been so consigned to oblivion that now no mention of it was made by the procurators of the same church: but that little estate was so claimed by the natives of that province (although it was not unknown to the men of the aforesaid church) that they never paid any revenue at all from it. And that the power of the Saint might shine forth, it happened that two men were at variance in a lawsuit on the occasion of this ambition. Of these, the one who defended the part of St. Peter was Finodus; the one who claimed it in the name of SS. Crispin and Crispinian [cc] was called Ghislebert; and when they had long struck at each other with the darts of words, they came into the field: a stone was fixed fast in the ground, by which the fields of the two possessions were bounded. The man of St. Crispin was urging with great outcry that this must be transferred within the field of that vineyard, and a part shut off by joining it to the other. But the defender, vehemently resisting, said that it ought rather to be reserved for the judgement of God, he himself being a most constant witness of the matter brought forward, namely that that field, as it was measured out, should be yielded to the men of St. Peter.

[8] and elsewhere, Then the invader boldly leaps forward, and strives with great force to tear out the stone and roll it outside: in wonderful fashion, while he sweats about the rock

and to tear it from its place, he is consumed in vain labour; an eye, at once falling from his head, poured darkness round him, and the empty socket too is pierced with most grievous pain; and so, abandoning what he had wickedly begun, he repented, detesting all that he had presumed, and was a terror or an example of correction to the rest. But now it must be made known what miracle appeared, as I believe for a testimony of faith or of work, with us placed present [dd]. For at the time when there was staying by day in the monastery of the same Cella a certain woman named Dada [ee], so bent with contraction that her legs … stretched, she, while awaiting the benefit of the Saint, was working within a small hut at the gate of the place for the sake of a pittance ; for when, newly married, she was touched with this affliction by the judgement of the invisible maker, she took counsel to go to the tomb of blessed Ghislenus and … to beg help for her necessity: she did so, and deserved to obtain what she faithfully asked. Wherefore, when she wished, on account of the benefit imparted to her, to serve the watches of the church under the sacred veil, she is sought back by her husband, and is urged in every way that she must return to the marital business; but since she could not resist, overcome she returned [to] the bed, and presently is punished with her former sickness *. When therefore, trembling and groaning with late repentance, she was being bent along with her husband, she is brought back again to the monastery, at whose doors, as I said, she had completed twice three courses of years [ff] in bewailing that she had been led away to the pleasure of the flesh and also in more intently imploring the help of mercy.

[9] with prodigies At which time indeed another not small miracle (which seems not out of place not to be passed over here) was shown in this very monastery. Exceedingly to be grieved over and greatly to be groaned at is the sad handwriting of our sins, whose kindling of evil burning blazed so inwardly that the heat of the fire reached outwardly even to insensible matter; for deep sighs are drawn when we see the very fabric of the basilica and the many buildings round about given to the fire, negligence intervening, by the examination of the hidden Arbiter. This lamentable destruction came about in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord nine hundred and thirty-eight, on Sunday, at the sixth hour, on the 12th day before the Kalends of September, duke Ghislebert contending against Otto king of the Saxons for the sake of the kingdom [gg]. But although, as I said, the sign of the burning filled the inhabitants with weeping and grief, it gave nevertheless not the least consolation that the crypt, which had thus far enclosed within its fenced circuit his body and at the same time the pledges of other Saints, appeared unmoved, while the circle of flames raged on every side.

[10] There after this, his festivity being at hand, when the lauds of the nocturnal office were being performed in the nearby basilica of St. Martin, are made illustrious. the aforesaid woman, praying through the night, deserved to obtain the desired remedies of health. For when she was holding a watchful night in this supplication, amid the solemnities of the hymns, while the fourth lesson of it was being recited, she felt herself visited with a saving benefit, and with slow effort rising she stood on her feet, unseen, all being astonished, and entered the basilica where the ecclesiastical chant was resounding, we too marvelling together [hh]; the vigils then being completed, when the matter, she herself setting it out, had become known to all, the abbot of the place Gerard and the whole company of the brethren, proclaiming the due praises of the heavenly magnificence, giving thanks to Him who has not ceased to visit kindly hitherto those made glad by the merits of his servant Ghislenus, proclaim it with frequent repetition [ii]. And the woman too, promising to serve the ministries of the church under the sacred veil, does not cease to give immense thanks for the benefit given her. For the divine mercy has deigned to bestow on us such physicians as help without delay, and heal the body from the affliction of sickness.

ANNOTATA.

p. About the year 933. See the Prelim. Comm., number 61.

q. Rainer names her Godrada in the book of Miracles, chapter 9, and says she came to the monastery of Cella from Cervia: Cervia is, as I think, a town of Hainaut, commonly Chièvres.

r. To Rainer, chapter 4, a citizen of Cambrai.

s. Behold an eyewitness.

t. But to Rainer, chapter 5, Adalbrada, from the village of Mortruum (elsewhere I read Mortinum), perhaps Mortagne on the Scheldt between Condé and Tournai.

u. Rainer treats of this blind man in chapter 6, and adds that he came to the monastery of Cella from Liège.

x. Of this one Rainer, chapter 7: he came from the villa of Beldiniacum, which ours calls neighbouring Saint-Ghislain. Is it perhaps Baudegnies, a village near the town of Le Quesnoy?

y. Of Valenciennes, to Rainer, chapter 8.

z. She came from the villa of St. Salvius near Valentianae or Valenciennes, according to Rainer, chapter 9.

aa. See number 57 of the Prelim. Comment.

bb. It is called Alamannis by Rainer, chapter 9. You have more at number 57 of the Prelim. Comment.

cc. It is a monastery of the Order of St. Benedict near Augusta Suessionum (Soissons), called Saint-Crépin-le-Grand.

dd. Another testimony of an eyewitness.

ee. Rainer treats of Dada in chapter XI in the Ms. kept with us.

ff. There is missing in the Ms. kept with us, of the Miracles of St. Gislenus by Rainer, the miracle done in favour of Simon, abbot of Cella, accused of having sold the relics of his Patron, of which treatment was made at number 69 of the Prelim. Comm.: but it is found in the codex of Saint-Ghislain in chapter XI.

gg. Concerning these see what was said at number 66 of the Prelim. Comm.

hh. Our author therefore was present at the event.

ii. St. Gerard therefore was also present at these things.

* Perhaps festiva, festal?

* Read: pergeret dubitare

* Read: a S. Gisleno tertio apparente, by St. Gislenus appearing a third time

* Perhaps apparitoribus, by attendants?

* Perhaps innotuit, became known?

* Perhaps quamvis?

* Redundant

* Perhaps ad nates, to the buttocks?

* obsonii, of provisions

* languore

* agentes

* Perhaps visitare?