Pantalus

ON ST. PANTALUS, OR PANTULUS, BISHOP OF THE RAURACI AND MARTYR, AT COLOGNE,

IN THE YEAR 451.

CRITICO-HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.

Pantalus or Pantulus, bp. of the Rauraci, M., at Cologne (S.)

BY D. A. B.

§ I. The name of the Saint in the sacred Fasti; his relics preserved in various churches: difficulties proposed by Schoepflin: what order is to be kept in overturning them.

St. Pantalus or Pantulus, whom the manuscript Brussels Additions to Usuard mention at the 30th day of August, The Saint, whose name is inscribed in the sacred Fasti, and whom Greven's, and the Lübeck-Cologne Martyrology, add as companion to St. Ursula and her Companion virgins on the 21st day of October, is celebrated today by the Martyrology of Basel published in the year 1584, Peter de Natalibus in the Catalogue of the Saints, book 9, fol. 195, Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints who are lacking in the Roman Martyrology, du Saussay in the Supplement to his Gallican Martyrology, page 1180, Gelenius in the pious and sacred Fasti which he published in the book On the Greatness of Cologne, page 658 and following, Châtelain in his Universal Martyrology of the Saints, and finally he who composed the Paris Martyrology printed in the year 1727. The announcement with which the latter recalls the memory of our Saint I here exhibit to the reader, because it embraces much in few words. It has thus: On the fourth day before the Ides of October, of St. Pantalus, who, bishop of the Rauraci, is believed to have sat at Basel and died at Cologne; whence his head was brought back to Basel on this day. Therefore the Alsatians venerate our Saint as the chief patron of that church, says Grandidier, writer of the New History of Alsace, tome 1, page 258; and the author of certain manuscript Little Notes, which, transmitted to Bolland, are preserved in the Museum of the hagiographers, asserts that the name of St. Pantalus, as also of St. Henry the emperor, of whom it has been treated in this Work at the 14th day of July, is inscribed in the ancient Calendars of the church of Basel in colour, as they say, Rubricated, that the images of both, as chief patrons, are engraved on the front of both the Breviary and the Martyrology, and that their festal day is recalled by the people of Basel under the solemn rite which they call of the first class.

[2] Nor does Sudan, priest of the S. J., disagree with these, who prepared the Basilea Sacra, and whom with special cult the Alsatians, that is, the people of Basel, published at Porrentruy in the year 1658, writing to Bolland about the year 1644 and sending him the Lesson customarily read on the 12th day of October, sacred to St. Pantalus, and taken from the Proper of the church of Basel published in the year 1623, which has thus: St. Pantalus, adorned with every kind of virtue and learning, appointed bishop for the church of Basel, diligently fulfilled all the offices of a true and good pastor. And he was so devoted to propagating the Christian religion that he omitted nothing which he judged to pertain to increasing it, even at the most certain peril of life set before him. At length, matters in the church having been duly arranged, carried down the river, he was slaughtered for the name of Christ by the Huns then laying waste Germany, with St. Ursula and that remaining choir of sacred Virgins. His body is honourably preserved at the Maccabees. His head was translated from there to Basel on the 4th day before the Ides of October, on which day his memory is solemnly recalled. The arena of the holy Martyr, therefore, is to be fixed at Cologne, as will better become clear from what is to be said below, although Ferrari and Châtelain, in the Works praised above, most probably on account of the cult which is shown to Pantalus by the people of Basel, judged that he was to be placed at Basel in today's announcement. But from what space of time St. Pantalus enjoyed ecclesiastical honours I cannot say. But since his name is inserted in no ancient Martyrologies at all, I would easily believe that public cult was shown to him only from the 12th century, in which his sacred body, laid in a tomb, was dug out of the earth, as I am going to write in the course of this Sylloge.

[3] The cult of St. Pantalus without doubt took a new increase venerate on account of his sacred relics laid up with them, when various churches were enriched with the sacred relics which had been taken out of his tomb. There exists, says Crombach, Ursula Vindicata, page 1945, his stone sarcophagus at Cologne. His head is religiously venerated there: certain relics of his were translated to Deutz in the year 1156. The praised author had already said the same on page 682, and had moreover added: … Some were carried away to Saint-Trond in the year 1271, as appears from the catalogue of the place: others were inserted in a silver casket in the year 1225, on the Ides of July, in the collegiate church of the Holy Apostles at Cologne by Walter the bishop (a suffragan, as the writers of the new Gallia hint, tome 3, col. 689), of which translation of his there exists an authentic document, with indulgences added. Some also were carried to Basel, and, I think, a part of the skull, which was formerly venerated piously there on the 12th of October with a feast of Translation: of which Wurstisen in the Epitome of the History of Basel, chap. 6. Of this last translation of the head of St. Pantalus to Basel the anonymous author of the Annals of the Dominicans of Colmar, which Wurstisen published in the year 1585, inserted in tome 2 of the Historians of Germany, page 5 and following, who put the last hand to his Work in the year 1303, has thus at the year 1270: The head of Pantalus, bishop of Basel, who was beheaded at Cologne with St. Ursula and her companions, carried to Basel by a provident and discreet man, an abbot …, was received by Henry, bishop of Basel, with great reverence. That an arm of the same Saint is religiously preserved in the treasury of the canons of Arlesheim of the same diocese, Grandidier teaches, History of Alsace, page 258; and Gelenius, On the Greatness of Cologne, page 336, writes that some also are laid up in the church of the Holy Virgins at Cologne; and that two bones, as it were the calves of the legs, exist in the monastery of Altenberg appears from a certain instrument made in the year 1646, which Crombach inserted in Ursula Vindicata, page 655. Whether other sacred remains of St. Pantalus still remain laid up in the sarcophagus, since none of the writers teaches us, I shall say no more of them.

[4] Schoepflin regards him as a fictitious man for the reasons But him whom the church of Basel holds as its chief patron, and whom it venerates with a special rite, Johann Daniel Schoepflin, historiographer of France, professor of eloquence and history in the University of Strasbourg, in a work published in the year 1751, entitled Alsatia Illustrata, tome 1, pages 339, 340, 341, etc., reckons as some fictitious person and therefore to be struck out of the roll of the Saints. The reasons by which the learned man defends his opinion, and to which some writers of no lowest note adhere, it will not irk me to copy out here, drawn summarily from his work. I find no one, says Schoepflin, of the historians, nor of the martyrologists, nor even of those who describe the Ursuline martyrdom, before the 15th century, who mentions Pantalus. In the revelations of Elisabeth of Schönau, who flourished under the emperor Frederick I about the year 1156, Pantalus is indeed enumerated: but writings of this kind cannot be referred to the class of historical books. If anything historical lies beneath, it is too much overwhelmed with fables. Only in the 15th century and the following are certain martyrologists found who place Pantalus among the companions and martyrs of Ursula and her associates, relying on no other foundation than the revelations of Elisabeth of Schönau. Whence the whole lot of Pantalus rests on the Legend of Ursula alone, which is the offspring only of the 12th century. And if you inspect this, you will easily detect it to be neither true nor probable. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first writer of this martyrdom, is stuffed with fables: with equal fictions teem the departure of the holy Virgins from Britain, and their arrival on the shores of Gaul, that is, at Cologne, the journey to the City and the return from the City through the Alps and along the bank of the Rhine to the city of Cologne. Since by this narration, Schoepflin continues, the greatest part of the remaining tradition falls, Pantalus too falls, who, returning from Rome and having followed the journey with the Virgins returning to Cologne, is said to have perished there together with them.

[5] here set down, which, Nor does the time to which Crombach, Baronius, Pagi (Henschen and Papebroch may be added, who had much to say about it), Brower and others fix the martyrdom of St. Ursula, who have marked that martyrdom at the year either 237, or 383, or finally at the year 451, favour our not holding Pantulus as fictitious. For whichever of these calculations we follow, Schoepflin continues, Pantalus cannot but seem fabulous to all who are even slightly acquainted with historical matters. But truly, those who have embraced each of these epochs were not sufficiently attentive either to the origins and circumstances of the city of Basel or of its bishopric. For in those centuries Basel either did not yet possess the rights of a city, or, if it possessed them, certainly had no bishop, since Augusta Rauracorum must have been the seat of the Bishop; which having been overthrown at the beginning of the fifth century, neither Augusta Rauracorum, nor Basel, nor the other cities along the Rhine had bishops through the whole course of the 5th century. These are the arguments with which Schoepflin assails the episcopate of Pantalus, in solving which the whole aim of this disputation of ours will lie. But at the very threshold

I wish the reader to be warned that, although monuments from which the history of St. Pantalus may come out complete in all its parts are not available, yet the arguments with which Schoepflin attacks it and undertakes to overturn it are not such that on account of them St. Pantalus ought at once to seem a fictitious bishop and therefore to be struck out of the roll of the Bishops of the Rauraci: for of them there is absolutely none to which a sufficiently apt answer cannot be given, as will be clear in the course of this disputation. Nor does almost any other hope remain to the learned reader who, going through the History of the 5th or 6th century, desires to measure these unhappy times through so many and so great disasters inflicted on the inhabitants of Alsace, that is, the Rauraci, especially by the Huns and Alemanni, after the most wretched overthrow of all the cities, fortresses and towns. These things laid down, I now return to the difficulties proposed against St. Pantalus.

[6] And, to begin from the time at which St. Pantalus suffered martyrdom, summarily indeed here if you mark it at the year 451, there will be nothing which Schoepflin can argue. For truly the state of Augusta Rauracorum and of Basel at the beginning of the 5th century was such, as I am going to say more fully afterwards, that either Basel could even then be regarded as the seat of a bishop, or the bishop of the Rauraci, Augusta Rauracorum having been worn down by various disasters, must have fixed his see at Basel at the beginning or in the growing of the fifth century. 28 That there exists no mention of St. Pantalus in the various works of the historians and martyrologists who flourished before the eleventh century, I readily admit with Schoepflin, for reasons to be adduced below. But although the memory of Attila and the Huns rampaging through the greatest part of Gaul and Belgium in the year 451 was most certain, yet you will scarcely find any of the writers, says Calles, writer of the Annals of the Church of Germany, tome 1, page 376, who committed to writing a full narration of this most savage irruption. For the face of things was so changed, and so great a disturbance existed in all these regions, that the irruption of Attila was rather noted than narrated by the historians or chronologers. For, it raging for seven months and more, namely from the month of April at least to November, it appears most probable that very many of the faithful of both sexes and of every state, bishops, priests and sacred virgins, met death for Christ in this most cruel invasion, in which so many cities and regions were given over to sword and fire. But besides Memorius and his companions, slain then in the territory of Troyes, of whom it has been treated in this Work at the 7th day of September, you will scarcely find any other inscribed in the sacred Fasti of the Gallican Church. What wonder, then, if the name of Pantalus is read inserted neither in the Martyrologies nor in the works of the historians?

[7] and briefly weighed, But, not to run out further beyond the limits of Alsace, almost no province experienced so many and so great calamities as the Gallic bank of the Rhine then experienced, when, by the testimony of Schoepflin himself, the cities of Augusta Rauracorum, of the Nemetes, of the Vangiones, of the people of Basel, as far as the city of Mainz, were all then plundered and destroyed with fire and sword; and yet not even one writer is to be found who has set up in express words any narration of the disasters of these various places. Nay, what the learned Strasbourg professor has in his praised Work about the history of Augusta Rauracorum and of the various towns or fortresses destroyed at that time, he seems certainly to have drawn only from their ruins and rubble. It is no wonder, then, that in this so great slaughter of men the memory of Pantalus fell away, and it would without doubt still remain effaced, had not the sarcophagus of our Saint, dug up in the Ursuline field, taught us that he was set over the church of Basel or of the Rauraci: and therefore Schoepflin can scarcely argue aptly from the silence of the authors and martyrologists to prove Pantalus fictitious. 38 But whether the martyrologists who composed their Work in the 15th century and the following drew their present announcement of St. Pantalus from the revelations of St. Elisabeth, set over the monastery of Schönau, of whom it has been treated at the 18th of June, or received it from other monuments, I do not know. For those martyrologists could easily take occasion from the cult which the Saint had enjoyed for a long interval of time among the people of Cologne and Basel to insert his name in the ecclesiastical Fasti, and therefore the revelations of St. Elisabeth of Schönau were not necessary to them for composing their announcement of St. Pantalus: but that they wove into it some tradition or other of the pilgrimage of the holy Ursuline Virgins and of Pantalus, bishop of Basel, from the city of Cologne to the City, and from the City to the city of Cologne, drawn from the revelations of St. Elisabeth, about which Papebroch, illustrating the Acts of that holy Virgin at the 18th of June, prudently judges silence should be kept, and devised, as it seems, only in the eleventh century or the following, what Schoepflin can argue from this against the truth of the martyrdom of the holy Virgins or of the episcopate of St. Pantulus I do not see; since the truth of these is supported by instruments which, as will become clear from what is presently to be said, far surpass the age of St. Elisabeth and of the abbot Ecbert, who committed his sister's sayings to writing. 48 But that Schoepflin judged that the lot of St. Pantulus depends on the Ursuline Legend came about, I think, from this, that, since the martyrdom of the Saint is said by writers of the middle age to be bound up to some extent with the Ursuline slaughter, for causes to be indicated below, the learned professor, neglecting the other monuments by which the martyrdom of the holy Ursuline Virgins can be established, discoursing only of the Acts of SS. Ursula and her Companions composed in the 11th century, and of the various fictions with which they are defiled, builds his whole mass from these, from which the man, otherwise illustrious for learning, may hurl his darts against the episcopate and martyrdom of St. Pantalus. But since we likewise judge that those Acts, which he censures so severely, are to be relegated among the fables as supposititious, nothing at all can be elicited from the revelations of St. Elisabeth and from other monuments of this kind, composed in the 11th or 12th century, to show that our Saint, whom we prove from elsewhere to have truly existed, is fictitious.

[8] But since Schoepflin judges that the truth of St. Pantulus the bishop is overturned by attacking the truth of the Ursuline martyrdom, will be weighed with more diligent care in the following §§. in order to press better on the footsteps of the arguer, I must establish, with fitting brevity, the certainty of the most celebrated Ursuline contest by monuments of undoubted credit: and therefore, the various circumstances with which certain writers of the middle age have transmitted it to us infected being dismissed, I here undertake to prove only this, namely that the immense slaughter of Virgins which they call the Ursuline martyrdom, perpetrated at Cologne, is asserted by authentic monuments, and that a constant tradition about it flourishes among the people of Cologne. And the other difficulty, drawn from the state of the cities of the Rauraci and of Basel at the beginning or in the middle of the 5th century, and which the Strasbourg professor holds to be of no slight moment, I shall weigh with fitting attention, and, this having been weighed and examined, the learned reader will argue that St. Pantalus, bishop of the Rauraci, could then reside at Basel, or, if you please, fix his chair there according to the circumstances of the times, and hence be called bishop of Basel. And that some light may come to the first times of this church, wrapped in very thick darkness, it has seemed to me that a special disputation should be instituted about its first bishops, which will not be, as I think, unwelcome to the learned.

§ II. The difficulty drawn from the martyrdom of SS. Ursula and her companions is answered: the truth of this contest asserted: why St. Pantalus was said to be a companion of the holy Ursuline Virgins: of the Saint's tomb found at Cologne and the title put on it: the time of the martyrdom is marked.

Against Schoepflin the truth of the Ursuline martyrdom, The chief difficulty which he raises against St. Pantalus, drawn from the martyrdom of SS. Ursula and her Companions, which Schoepflin regards as discordant with truth, nay even with likelihood, here at once occurs to be weighed, to which, as appears, an approved answer will be exhibited if the truth of this most celebrated contest is established from authentic monuments, the various circumstances, however, being cut away from it with which writers of the middle age have for the most part infected the Ursuline history, of which a special disputation will have to be instituted at the 21st day of October: I undertake here, then, to prove against Schoepflin, from ancient monuments of undoubted credit, either of martyrologists or others, that the martyrdom of the holy Virgins performed at Cologne was true.

[10] And indeed Wandelbert expressly teaches us that this numerous multitude of Virgins was slain for Christ at Cologne, here both from the Martyrology of Wandelbert, who, as the writers of the Histoire littéraire de la France prove, tome V, page 377, composed his Martyrology about the year 845, and recalls those Virgins of Cologne at the 21st of October with the following announcement:

Then at once, numerous along the shores of the Rhine, shine Trophies raised to Christ by virgin bands At the city of Agrippina, whose thousands impious fury once Slaughtered, illustrious with holy Leaders.

Our martyrologist names neither Ursula nor the thousands of holy Virgins, as Schoepflin notes; but when he writes that the holy Virgins fought under holy leaders, he certainly sufficiently designates Ursula, who is commonly related to have been as it were queen of all. But, you will say with Schoepflin, page 340, in the Notes, the speech here is of thousands, not of XI thousand Virgins slain for Christ. But neither do we contend that eleven thousand Virgins were slaughtered in this contest: for this number is first exhibited by a certain charter of Hermann, bishop of Cologne, made in the year 922, which Fleien published in his disputation on the Ursuline martyrdom, page 895 and following: but when Wandelbert relates that thousands of Virgins were slain, what does he indicate by these words but a very great number of those who suffered for Christ, which God knows? Moreover, if there is no mention of the Ursuline Virgins in the announcement of Wandelbert, as Schoepflin writes, let him say himself whom that ancient martyrologist celebrates on this day in the words related above? without doubt those whose memory the church of Cologne recalls, therefore Ursula and her Companions, whom the people of Cologne in fact venerate with more solemn cult on the 21st day of October.

[11] and from other ecclesiastical monuments With the words of Wandelbert agrees a certain English Missal, of which Schulting in his Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, Crombach, Ursula Vindicata, page 998, and the author of the Sacrarium of Cologne, page 95, written 900 and more years before, in whose Calendar, affixed to the Work itself, at the 13th day before the Kalends of November is read inscribed the Feast of the holy Virgins at Cologne. The tradition of the people of Cologne about the holy Virgins is likewise testified by the Acts of St. Cunibert, who, according to the authors of the new Gallia Christiana, tome 3, col. 626, presided over the church of Cologne about the year 626. Further, as is detected in the Acts of this holy Pontiff, published by Surius at the 12th day of November and composed by a nearly contemporary writer, whatever Baillet may write in his Notes prefixed to the said day, the Basilica of the Holy Virgins, which still exists in the Ursuline field within the walls of the city, had already then been built in the city of Cologne. And therefore in the 9th, 8th, nay even the middle of the 7th century, that is, only two hundred years after their martyrdom, which

appears to be fixed at the year 451, had elapsed, the truth of the martyrdom of the holy Virgins, or the tradition about it, remains asserted from this basilica built over their tomb or in the place in which they had been committed to the earth.

[12] and asserted from various charters, and not at odds with the truth, Not a few monuments also favour the tradition of the people of Cologne, which Crombach published from page 776 to 801, or which Fleien praised, page 895, and Gelenius in the book On the Greatness of Cologne, page 334, and by which, from the year 853 down to our own times, the bishops of Cologne Gunthar, Hermann I, Wichfrid, St. Bruno, Pilgrim, Hermann II, St. Anno, Sigewin, Bruno II and others endowed this church, built before the year 625, with various gifts and privileges, or confirmed those already granted. That tradition is likewise testified by that Ursuline field, of which presently, without doubt so named from the name and martyrdom of SS. Ursula and her Companions, within which was founded the church sacred to the same Martyrs, and from which tombs were dug up and the bodies of the holy Women brought out with evident tokens of slaughter and martyrdom, so that, says Papebroch in the Paralipomena to the Conatus on the Catalogues of the Pontiffs, he would be a man of iron who could bring himself to deny all credit to a tradition of the people of Cologne resting on such ancient foundations. Long before the 12th century, therefore, there was a constant tradition about the holy Virgins slain at Cologne and buried there; which, since from the year 600 it appears asserted and firm through the church dedicated to them, seems to have flourished in the 6th century, nay to have taken its beginning from the 5th century, in which they themselves suffered for Christ; and therefore the martyrdom of the holy Ursuline Virgins is true.

[13] But that its history also was not foreign to likelihood, [nay that this too was not foreign to likelihood, learned men of no lowest note here called upon prove.] Brower, on the third book of Venantius Fortunatus, from page 61, Fleien in his disputation on the Ursuline martyrdom, and Papebroch just praised have proved by reasons not to be despised; whether you suppose that the sacred Virgins, having left Britain, were tossed by land and sea, or say that they were gathered from Gaul, Belgium or even from the shores of the Moselle and the Rhine by the Huns, running hither and thither after the manner of barbarians, and reduced to slavery, or finally assert that they were hastening to Cologne as to a refuge, and were then captured and slain near Cologne by the Huns, returning in fury from the Catalaunian plains to their own lands, out of hatred of the faith and on account of their purpose of preserving chastity. Some ancient inscriptions found at Cologne, in the parts along the Rhine, of which Janus Gruter, cited by Schoepflin, Alsatia Illustrata, pages 321 and 473, and a certain passage of the poet Ausonius, Epist. 18, will perhaps favour Calles's conjectures, by all which it is proved that the name of Ursulus, from whom Ursula was named, was not unknown in these parts already then, and indeed before the Hunnish rampage. And so this holy virgin could be said to be a native not of Britain but of Germania Prima or Secunda. But these things remain to be disputed at the 21st of October. It is asserted, therefore, that the martyrdom of the holy Ursuline Virgins is neither discordant with truth, nor are either their history or the tradition of the people of Cologne at odds with likelihood, whatever Schoepflin may have written to the contrary, as it is easy to prove from the authors praised.

[14] But perhaps you will say, what has this lengthy disputation about the Ursuline martyrdom to do with the history of Pantalus? Wherefore the truth of this martyrdom is disputed here. Namely that the difficulties of Schoepflin, who attaches the lot of Pantalus to the Ursuline martyrdom, might be more certainly washed away. For since the Strasbourg professor had undertaken to overturn the truth of this martyrdom, in such a way that, it being overturned, he would say the lot of St. Pantalus was overturned by the same argument, I was therefore compelled, pressing on the footsteps of the arguer, to dispute some things about the martyrdom of the holy Virgins of Cologne, by the assertion of which the lot of St. Pantalus might in some way be established, or rather that, the truth of this most celebrated contest being confirmed, at least nothing might now remain for Schoepflin to hurl against St. Pantalus from their martyrdom. But now at length it must be said for what cause the history of St. Pantalus is held by some to be to some extent annexed to the martyrdom of the holy Ursuline Virgins.

[15] St. Pantalus called a companion to these holy Virgins on account of the tomb, The Lübeck-Cologne Martyrology, in the announcement at the 21st of October in which it celebrates the Birthday of SS. Ursula and her Companions, and the writer of the Basel Martyrology, as also those who took down in writing the revelations of St. Elisabeth of Schönau and of Blessed Hermann of Steinfeld, of whom at the 7th day of April, or, as appears more probable, disfigured them with their own fictions, and some others who in these times wrote something about St. Pantalus, added the holy Bishop as companion to SS. Ursula and her Companion virgins, making pilgrimage from the city of Cologne to the City, or returning from the City to Cologne: but by what reason the authors praised above were induced to do this I do not sufficiently see, unless perhaps they were moved to write this by the fact that, his sarcophagus having been found about the year 1155 in the Ursuline field, in which most of the holy Virgins were committed to the tomb, the corrupters and falsifiers of Legends seized from this the occasion of giving him as companion to the holy Virgins. And this is, as it seems to me, the chief reason why the lot of St. Pantalus is said by most writers to be in some way annexed to the Ursuline history. About this tomb of St. Pantalus some things occur to be noted.

[16] in the Ursuline field The holy Ursuline Virgins and the other companions of their martyrdom who suffered for Christ, committed to burial by a certain Clematius, as is reported, in the field which from Ursula they call the Ursuline, Solinus or Aquilinus, set over the church of Cologne about the year 462 or 509, as Le Cointe narrates at this year, after an interval of many years in the pontificate, as the ancient monuments of the City relate, of which Fleien in his disputation on the Ursuline martyrdom, pages 893 and 894: Bringing them out of the old little places, laid them up again in stone mausoleums. Further, although neither Fleien nor Ortwin, who used them in composing the history of the church of the Holy Maccabees, teaches us the age of these manuscripts, and therefore we cannot say in what esteem they are to be held; yet since they contain nothing discordant with what the people of Cologne commonly relate, or with what we have received from other sources as done from the 7th century, there is no reason why we should not assent to their assertion. Thus, then, the sacred bodies of the Martyrs remained laid up, until some of them, found in the 7th and the other succeeding centuries, were given worthy and special honour by the citizens of the city of Cologne.

[17] dug up with others about the year 1155 And indeed, to come, the other findings of the bodies of these Saints being passed over, to that most celebrated one which was carried out in the year 1155 and the eight following years by Gerlach, abbot of the monastery of Deutz, to whom, as Gelenius testifies, On the Greatness of Cologne, page 345, this care had been chiefly committed, that not a few sarcophagi were then brought out of the earth is testified by most writers of this age, by the author of a certain instrument made at this very time, which Crombach, taking it from the archive of the monastery of Deutz, then inserted in his Ursula Vindicata, page 490, and by Ecbert, who lived at this time and took down the sayings of his sister St. Elisabeth, which Crombach afterwards published, page 719 and following, chap. 4. Nor is there any reason why credit should not be given to this writer, since he has here described nothing except what he or his sister saw. The same is asserted by Trithemius in the Chronicle of the monastery of Sponheim, collected from various monuments and with the greatest diligence, as he himself writes in the Oration prefixed to it, and published in the year 1601, at the year 1163, and by Brower, author of the Annals of Trier, at the same; so that absolutely no doubt can be conceived about this finding, known to the Christian world, of the holy Ursuline Virgins and the Companion martyrs committed to burial in the Ursuline field.

[18] But what pertains chiefly to our purpose, as is clear from this instrument, the author of the instrument of which in the preceding number declares in express words that at entirely the same time at which the sarcophagi of the holy Martyrs were dug up in the Ursuline field the tomb of St. Pantulus was also found; whose words I subjoin here: Here begin the Revelations of the titles or names of the holy Martyrs and Virgins. In the year from the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ 1155, in the fourth Indiction, and in the continuous revolution of the nine following years, the emperor Frederick ruling the Roman empire, Pope Adrian IV also administering the Pontificate of the Roman Church, there presiding also in succession over the holy church of Cologne the archbishops, namely Arnold II, Frederick II and Reinald the archchancellor, Gerlach being abbot in the church of Deutz, the bodies of the holy Martyrs and holy Virgins were raised in the suburb of the city of Cologne, whose names or titles, found in their tombs and laid up in the archives of the same church, we have thought worthy to be noted down in schedules and letters for the knowledge of posterity, for this reason, that we take care to commend more closely to the memory of posterity the devotion to the holy Martyrs, whom, beyond the expectation of all the living, we saw translated before our eyes, and whose bodies moreover, or titles, we brought out of the tombs with our hands, in which also we beheld and venerated a thousand signs of martyrdoms; singly therefore we have arranged the titles of each, as they are seen to be written on the stones found with them, beginning from the greater, in this manner. Here are described the titles found in the various tombs, among which the one which holds the ninth place is inscribed to St. Pantalus, bishop of Basel.

[19] The truth of the finding of this tomb inscribed to St. Pantalus is established by Ecbert, more than once praised, in chap. 4 of the Revelations of his holy Sister, and preserved at Cologne in the church dedicated to the Holy Maccabees, which, as we have said, he committed to writing. And that that sarcophagus exists in the church now called that of the Maccabees, built many centuries ago in the Ursuline field of the city of Cologne, and that he saw it existing, Crombach teaches and hints, Ursula Vindicata, pages 542 and 1045. The same had already been taught and testified by Cratepolius in the book On the Holy Bishops of Germany, published at Cologne in the year 1592, pages 117 and 118, by the author who published the Proper of the church of Basel, whom Sudan mentions, Basilea Sacra, page 17, and by the manuscripts preserved in the Bollandian Museum, transmitted by Father Gamans, well deserving of our Work: by the assertions of all of whom it is not obscurely proved that the tomb of St. Pantalus is laid up at the Maccabees. But, you will say, there exists no memory of that sarcophagus either in Winheim, who in his Sacrarium Agrippinense institutes a discourse about the relics preserved in the church of the Holy Maccabees, or in Gelenius, who also enumerates these remains of the Saints laid up there in his work On the Greatness of Cologne, page 533. But what is to be argued from the silence of these authors, except that with less diligence than was fitting

they wrote about all these relics or tombs formerly found? For indeed Cratepolius, contemporary with Winheim, and Crombach, who was coeval with Gelenius, exhibit an express testimony about this tomb of St. Pantalus preserved with the Maccabees; and Winheim too, when he makes a discourse about the holy relics preserved in this church, asserts on page 265 that stone sepulchres, placed round the circuit of the church, are seen there, and yet does not teach us to whom they belong. And Gelenius writes that certain relics of St. Pantalus are preserved in the church of the Holy Virgins. However that may be, what can be drawn from the silence of these two writers against the truth of this tomb preserved in the church of the Maccabees, while others, more in number, assert that it exists there, I do not see.

[20] to which the following title And that in this sarcophagus of St. Pantalus some tokens of his martyrdom were found, as the writers just named narrate to have happened with others, appears most probable. But what these tokens of martyrdom were I am not going to declare; but this above all occurs to be noted, namely that Gerlach, abbot of the monastery of Deutz, to whom the care of the most celebrated finding of the Ursuline bodies of the Companion Martyrs had been committed, and into whom, as is said in num. 18, some suspicion about the titles found in the tombs themselves had fallen, conceived absolutely no doubt about the tombs themselves, as also about the various tokens of martyrdom found in the sarcophagi themselves; and therefore it is no slight indication that he held those tombs as true and ratified, and not as newly fashioned and supposititious. I am of opinion, therefore, that the sepulchre of St. Pantalus found with others in the year 1155 is to be held as true, nor do I see for what cause anyone could raise the least doubt about it; but far otherwise, I judge, is to be thought of the title found on the very tomb of St. Pantalus, which, although enlarged by some addition, is nevertheless not forthwith to be thrown away, since it contributes something, as I shall presently show, to investigating some historical truths.

[21] put on it, is here weighed together with other titles, of which some That title has thus: Pantalus, bishop of Basel, having received the sacred Virgins with joy, led them to Rome, whence, having returned, he came to Cologne, and there underwent martyrdom with them; and St. Grata the Younger. This title also, conceived in almost the same words, is exhibited by Ecbert, Revelations of his holy Sister, chap. 6, Ursula Vindicata, page 725. Crombach inserted in his Work some titles also sufficiently similar to this and found in various sarcophagi, to which he subjoined others, but simpler ones, as containing the name of only one person, to which the letter S is prefixed; and what Papebroch thinks of the title of St. Pantalus, or rather of the others found in the sarcophagi of the holy Virgins or of the Companion martyrs, he who had already in his Conatus on the Catalogue of the Pontiffs, page 31, punished with severe censure the title put on the tomb of Cyriacus, is made manifest by the following words, which he supplies in his Paralipomena to the Conatus on the Catalogue of the Pontiffs, page 41: Further, the sepulchral titles which consist only of names could be judged genuine, but the rest to have been enlarged by certain words added, to create belief in the fabulous Legend, which I know not who had devised; but so far are these additions or the books of the pretended Revelations from winning any credibility for the Legend, that, on account of the evident tokens of fiction with which they teem, they rather detract from it. Nor would the learned man have censured the title of St. Pantalus with milder judgment if occasion had been given for examining it. But at what time those various additions were joined to the true and genuine titles, it will not be beside the point to inquire here briefly.

[22] That all those accessions sprang up or were composed in the fifth century, namely that in which the holy band of Ursuline Virgins suffered martyrdom, although about the year 1155 no one, I think, at all acquainted with antiquity will judge. For neither do they savour of the genius of the fifth century, nor, to use the words of Papebroch praised above, are they referable to these times; nay, I am the more readily induced to believe that they were invented after the ninth century had elapsed, because among these additions is read that put on the tomb of St. Pastolasius, by which he is called archbishop of Eger, Hungarian. For Hungary, in which is the city of Eger, was undoubtedly not given that name before the Hungarians, having arrived in Transylvania, had fixed seats in that region of Pannonia; but if you listen to Stilting, illustrating the Acts of St. Stephen the king at the 2nd day of September, nums. 32 and 33 of the Preliminary Commentary, and to Pray, writer of the Annals of the Huns, who on page 322 institutes a special disputation about the coming of the Hungarians into Pannonia, it will have to be said that this happened only in the year 889: wherefore, since the word Hungarian could have been put on the tomb of St. Pastolasius only after these times had elapsed, and it is therefore certainly either wholly fabricated or corrupted, it is very greatly to be feared that something similar then happened to the other titles of the sepulchres.

[23] But the words of Gelenius and of Ecbert, who flourished in the 12th century, seem to hint that this happened even later; enlarged, which run thus: There were found, says Gelenius in the book On the Greatness of Cologne, page 345, about the year 1156 and the nine following, on several, the inscribed names of various Saints whose relics were contained there. And since this matter had stirred up not a few difficulties and doubts, two bodies from these relics found were sent to Schönau, a monastery of the Benedictine institute, in which St. Elisabeth was then flourishing with the spirit of prophecy; but Ecbert sets out the matter in still clearer words, Revelations of his holy Sister, chap. 4, writing thus: At the same time (namely in the year 1156) there were found among the tombs of the virgins many bodies of holy bishops and of other great men. And there were laid in the monuments of each stones having titles inscribed on them, by which it was discerned who they were or whence. The chief and most notable of these the aforesaid abbot Gerlach sent to me (Elisabeth) from the above-said city (of Cologne), hoping that something could be revealed to me about them by the grace of the Lord, and desiring to be assured through me whether they were to be believed or not. For he had a suspicion of the finders of the holy bodies, lest perhaps, for the sake of gain, they had caused those titles to be fraudulently written. Further, these last words are worthy to be noted by the reader.

[24] that they might add force to the new history of the holy Virgins, That suspicion, therefore, which Gerlach had conceived, pertained only to the titles put on the sarcophagi themselves, not to the tombs themselves, which the abbot of Deutz held as true and genuine; but this doubt of Gerlach, who feared lest the finders of the holy bodies had caused titles to be written for the sake of gain, casts into me another suspicion too. For truly, since in these times, namely the eleventh and twelfth century, a certain new history of the holy Virgins and their Companions had been fabricated, with which much was mixed about their pilgrimages and various things about Bishops, Cardinals and Princes whom they had taken into their company, it could easily have happened that the writers of the same titles enlarged the titles, bare and simple in the time of their martyrdom, with these various fictions, by which they might render more credible, by this splendid and new kind of instrument, whatever prodigious things were put forth about the holy Ursuline Virgins and their Companions, and greater authority might accrue from it to what was said; for which cause these new additions, with which those titles found on the tombs of the holy Virgins and Companions have come down to us infected, seem to me to be fixed about the 12th century.

[25] here they are restored to their original simplicity. But since, as Papebroch praised above conjectures, these additions put on the titles seem to have been invented to add some credit to the Ursuline Legend, can it be that, all those accessions or fictions with which the history of the holy Virgins appears stuffed being cut away, the bare and true titles may appear, such as they were worked out by Clematius or by Solinus or Aquilinus, or by anyone else who took care to have the bodies of the holy Martyrs committed to burial? Would not, for example, the title inscribed to St. Pantalus be restored to its original genuineness if, the other words with which it was enlarged in the times of the middle age being rejected, it retained only these words, St. Pantalus, bishop of Basel? And indeed this cutting away of the words added by falsifiers did not much displease the author of the Sacrarium Agrippinense, who writes thus on page 90: I say that it could have been that among the prelates, of whom there were many in the company of St. Ursula, a certain one named Cyriacus was more honourable than the rest, and therefore obtained the title of Pontiff, as it can be proved from various histories that formerly the more notable priests were called Popes. Hence some priest of God, Cyriacus, called Pontiff in the company of the holy Virgins, the simpler sort afterwards perhaps believed to be the Roman one. This method of cutting away was used also by Coleti, editor of the new Italia Sacra, who, composing the List of the Bishops of Novara, tome 4, col. 691, supposed that these words, of Novara and Cardinal, were to be struck out from Maronius, whom the title found on his sepulchre exhibits as a Cardinal, and raised no doubt about the dignity of bishop granted to Maronius by the author of the title. But, you will say, since Coleti judges that the word of Novara is to be cut away from the title of Maronius, why should that word of Basel, put on the title inscribed to St. Pantalus, remain? But the very see of the holy Martyr prevents this word from being deleted, which, being situated on the Rhine and not very distant from the city of Cologne, could easily be known by the people of Cologne who committed the bodies of the holy Martyrs to burial, and so, expressed in the title, come down to us. It is better to define here the time at which St. Pantalus underwent martyrdom.

[26] Since the ancient writers determine absolutely nothing about this time, It is marked, therefore, not at the year 238, it is therefore to be traced from the year in which the immense slaughter of the holy Virgins was perpetrated at Cologne, and during whose rage the holy Bishop seems, as I have shown above, to have suffered death. But in assigning that, there is not one opinion among the learned. The first is that of those who with Crombach place the martyrdom of the holy Virgins about the year 238: the second of those who bind it to the year 384: the third finally determines that it is to be fixed at the year 451, namely that in which Attila, with a great army of Huns accompanying him, defiled both Germanies, Belgium and some provinces of Gaul with sword, fire and slaughter. Since this controversy is to be disputed above all at the 21st day of October, I shall here briefly bring forward what is apt for confirming my opinion. And indeed this is especially worthy of note, that all the patrons of these various opinions maintain with unanimous voice that that holy band of Virgins was slaughtered by the Huns. Hence the opinion of Crombach, by which he asserts that this slaughter was perpetrated at the year 238, falls by its own weight. For then, neither to the inhabitants of Gaul, nay scarcely of Europe, known before the year 370 or about,

was the Hunnish race, gone forth from its ancient seats, as Pray, writer of the Annals of the Huns, learnedly proves, page 63 and following. Moreover, Crombach and the others who favoured his opinion undertook to champion this opinion in order that some place might be given, between the supreme Pontiffs Pontian and Anterus, to a certain Cyriacus, of whom all the writers of the Catalogues of the Roman Bishops are silent; but what is to be judged of that Cyriacus Baronius and Papebroch teach, who judged that he was to be struck out of the sacred Lists of the Roman Church, not because, as Schoepflin writes on page 341, he was inscribed in the fictitious Acts of the Ursuline martyrdom as a companion of the holy Virgins, but because either he was inserted in no Catalogue at all of the supreme Pontiffs, or because about this time no place lay open for Cyriacus in them.

[27] Although the second opinion has found patrons of great name, namely Baronius, nor at 384, Henschen illustrating the Acts of St. Servatius at the 13th day of May, Papebroch just praised and others, yet it does not seem to me supported by sufficient monuments. For truly, if you turn over the history of the Huns, you will easily detect that before the year 451 they were in the Gauls only as auxiliaries and summoned by the Romans themselves. In vain will you say that the Huns who put to death the sacred band of Virgins were those whom Valentinian II had called in to avenge the death of Gratian; but St. Ambrose, Epist. 7, tome 2, col. 890 of the latest edition, writes that they did not even penetrate into the Gauls, but teaches that, approaching Gaul through the lands of Alemannia, they turned back to their own: neither, therefore, could they have destroyed the holy Ursuline band at Cologne, the metropolis of Germania Secunda, situated within the Gauls.

[28] but at the year 451, the Saint's martyrdom, The opinion, then, which attaches this immense slaughter of Martyrs to the year 451 appears to us the stronger; but what the opinion of Châtelain was, who, no year being marked, fixes the death of both St. Pantulus and the holy Virgins only in the fifth century, I have not ascertained. But many illustrious for learning place this martyrdom about the year 451: Otto of Freising, book 4, chap. 28, Godfrey of Viterbo, Fleien in the disputation on the Ursuline martyrdom, page 380 and following, Brower, Annals of Trier, at the year 451, Boucher, Belgium Romanum, book 17, chap. 3, Calles, Annals of the Church of Germany, tome 1, page 375, Pray, Annals of the Huns, pages 76, 156 and following, the author of a certain disputation published at Cologne in the year 1757, the martyrologist of the church of Paris, and not a few other writers, whose opinion I embrace the more willingly because, if you fix the martyrdom of St. Pantalus at the year 238 or 384, you could scarcely, nay not even scarcely, reconcile it with the state of Augusta Rauracorum and the city of Basel; but the matter will be far otherwise if you bind it to the year 451, as I shall presently show: especially since only in this year did the Huns, under Attila as leader, rampaging through the Gauls, fill them with slaughter and every kind of calamity: on the other hand, even if they came into the Gauls in the years 430, 435, 437 and 439, Pray proves by clear arguments at these years that they were summoned as auxiliaries by the Romans and Aetius, nor do I see why anyone could deny assent to this writer.

[29] [hence Schoepflin wrongly attacks the truth of St. Pantalus from the Ursuline martyrdom.] The truth of the Ursuline martyrdom, then, having been asserted, not indeed, as pleases Schoepflin, from the Revelations of St. Elisabeth of Schönau or from the sayings of her brother Ecbert, that is, of authors of the middle age, and the martyrdom of the holy Virgins of Cologne having been marked at the year 451, St. Pantalus, whose lot is said to be to some extent annexed to the lot of the Ursuline martyrdom, no longer falls; nay rather, as I think, some authority accrues from this to the history of St. Pantalus, or at least Schoepflin will be able to draw from the history of the Ursuline martyrdom no argument with which to assail the episcopate or martyrdom of St. Pantalus. As for the various circumstances with which certain writers, whom the Strasbourg professor names, have disfigured either the martyrdom or the history of the Ursuline Virgins, since all these are to be treated more fully at the 21st day of October, it is better to be silent about them here. But let it be permitted to me to note only this, that although Schoepflin regards most of them as fictions, the truth of the Ursuline martyrdom, established by so many and such monuments, does not on that account collapse with them. For it can be obscured by these and similar fables; but, as Schoepflin himself will admit, it cannot be destroyed: nor therefore the martyrdom of St. Pantalus, although by some But now there remains for me to weigh the second and chief argument of Schoepflin, drawn from the state of Augusta Rauracorum and of Basel.

§ III. The second difficulty against St. Pantalus, drawn from the state of Augusta Rauracorum and of Basel, is weighed: what the state of those cities was at the beginning or the middle of the 5th century is inquired into: the origin of the episcopal see of the Rauraci or of Basel.

From the state of the city of the Rauraci, whose The city of Rauricum or Rauracum, the common mother of the Rauraci, which, enlarged under Augustus as a colony of Veterans, took from this the name of Augusta Rauracorum, is situated on the left, that is, the Gallic, bank of the Rhine, at the little rivers Ergitia, commonly Ergotz or Ergetz, and Filina, which, when they have been joined in that city, roll down by one mouth into the Rhine, which formerly washed the walls of the same city, two French miles above Basel and one below Rheinfelden. Of what kind and how great this city was is still indicated in various places by the ruins of the forum, amphitheatre, temples and walls, which having been dug out of the earth and examined, Johann Daniel Schoepflin exhibited for the eyes of the learned to behold a not unwelcome delineation of this city, Alsatia Illustrata, page 149 and following; from whose words I have drawn almost all in writing this brief notice, as also in the course of this §.

[31] Augusta Rauracorum experienced various fortunes, its various fates are given in brief, which the Strasbourg professor pursues with his accustomed learning; this ancient city was in a most flourishing state and so remained until, the Alemanni occupying the bank of the Rhine, worn down by various disasters, despoiled of the name and right of a city and relegated to the class of fortresses, the Huns at length bursting in in the year 451, it came to an end in the village which is now called Augst. But that the splendour of Augusta Rauracorum was diminished in the second or third century of Christ, or even in the following one at least until the year 383 or about 389, as will become clear from the texts of Ammianus Marcellinus and Eunapius to be recited below, Schoepflin, discoursing of all these things, does not prove. And since St. Pantalus lost his life by martyrdom, namely in the year 451, as we hinted in num. 26 and following, it follows from this that he was set over the church of the Rauraci before the middle of the 5th century. To the difficulty, therefore, proposed by Schoepflin and deduced from the state of the cities of the Rauraci or of Basel about this time, a not inept answer will be given if I shall have given it proved that Basel, Augusta Rauracorum having been diminished by various calamities about this epoch, had come to such splendour, or then existed in such a state, that it offered, or could offer, a certain and safe refuge to the holy Bishop of the Rauraci. And now let it be permitted to begin from Rauracum.

[32] That the beginnings of the fifth century opened a mournful scene for the city of Rauricum Schoepflin teaches not in one place of his Alsatia Illustrata, but especially on page 176 and following, and he undertakes to prove this from these words of the Notitia of the provinces of Gaul first published by Sirmond, after the city of Basel, the Notitia of the provinces which, with some other learned men, he judges was composed under Honorius, who closed his last day in the year 423, relying chiefly on the words, which are: The province Maxima Sequanorum has cities IV in number, which are: the Metropolis, the city of the Vesontienses, the city of the Equestres, Noviodunum, the city of the Helvetii, Aventicum, the city of the Basilienses, the castrum Vindonicense, the castrum Ebredunense, the castrum Rauracense, the Portus Abucini. Hence Schoepflin with full right argues that Augusta Rauracorum was worn down by various disasters, and that Basel, scarcely born about the year 384 or 385, in which Ammianus Marcellinus was preparing his historical books, was enrolled under Honorius, who held power from the year 395 to 423, among the cities of the province Maxima Sequanorum: for it took such sudden increase that (if indeed it was plundered in the Vandal irruption of the year 408) soon rising from its ruins, or suddenly born from the ashes of the city of Rauricum, it was numbered among the cities. Thus the Strasbourg professor, to whom, asserting these things, I not unwillingly assent, although I judge that this Notitia of the provinces of Gaul was committed to writing not under Honorius but in the reign of Valentinian II, about the year 387, and therefore that the town of Rauricum was not plundered in the Vandal incursion, but was enrolled among the castra even before, as I shall presently try to prove.

[33] [not in the year 418 or 402, but under Valentinian the Younger, by whom the city of Arles] That this Notitia of the provinces of Gaul was composed before the city of Arles, which is inscribed in it as subject to the metropolis of Vienne, was raised into a metropolis, or after Augusta Rauracorum, by the witness of Ammianus Marcellinus, book 15, chap. 11, formerly the chief city of the Sequanian province, afflicted, as is believed, by various calamities, was relegated to the class of castra, everyone will admit. Further, that in the year 418 the city of Arles had already been given the name of metropolis is declared by Honorius in the Constitution, published by Bouquet, Scriptores Rerum Gallicarum, tome 1, page 766, and by others, by which he proclaimed that the assemblies of the seven provinces were to be celebrated every year in this city. But since it is established from the very words of this edict that the same assemblies had been proclaimed in this city by Petronius, prefect of the Gauls in the years 401 and 402, why may it not be argued that Arles was adorned with the honour of metropolis from that very time? Nay, I judge, relying chiefly on the reason which I am presently going to adduce, that this happened even earlier: from which it comes about that that Notitia, in which Arles is ascribed with other cities subject to the province of Vienne, appears by a sure sign, as it were, to have been committed to writing at the end of the 4th century.

[34] the dignity of Metropolis And indeed the city of Arles seems to me to have enjoyed the honour of Metropolis from the time when the praetorian prefect of the Gauls, Trier having been plundered by the Franks, or the Franks infesting the places of Trier neighbouring to them, transferred his seat to Arles: for how much dignity or power the supreme tribunal of this prefect, which gave law to all the provinces of the Gauls, recently erected within its walls, conferred upon it, everyone understands. But the translation of this seat, which Pagi, Bouquet and Hontheim judged to have been made in the year 401 or 402, I judge is to be fixed at least at the year 392; 1° because, the Franks bursting in upon Trier from the year 388, by the witness of Hontheim, Prodromus of the History of Trier, tome 1, pages 414 and 420, it is sufficiently likely that the praetorian prefect of the Gauls transferred his seat to Arles, far distant from the Rhine, lest it should lie open in future to the assaults of the barbarians. 2° because the same Hontheim, who from the year 389 or 390, in which the law on the public Post to the prefect of the Gauls at Trier

was proposed or directed to him, names no other passed in the following years which was sent to the prefect at Trier, indicates absolutely no trace of the prefecture of the Gauls among the people of Trier from then on; which certainly is no slight indication that the seat of the prefecture had then been transferred from Trier to Arles.

[35] And 3° finally, because that Arles was adorned with metropolitan dignity at least from the year 392, was adorned, composed in which Valentinian the Younger was cut off by a violent death, is shown by the petition offered by the bishops of the same metropolis about the year 450 to Pope St. Leo, published among his Works, tome 1, page 538, and, as the authors of the New History of Languedoc write, tome 1, page 545, now held by the learned as true and authentic, in which they mention the privileges granted to the city of Arles by Valentinian and Honorius in these words: This city the most faithful princes Valentinian and Honorius, of most clement memory, adorned with special privileges, and, to use their own words, by calling it the Mother of all the Gauls; for what, I ask, did the bishops wish to hint by these words, except that the city of Arles had been given metropolitan jurisdiction, both by Valentinian the Younger, who conferred it on it, and by Honorius, who, by a constitution passed in the year 418, proclaimed again the assemblies of the seven provinces prescribed by Petronius, formerly praetorian prefect, but interrupted through the straits of the times? Whatever, therefore, Pagi at the year 401, num. 36, and at the year 402, num. 32, and Hontheim, composing the History of Trier, have written, does not stand in the way of our believing that this dignity of metropolis was granted to the city of Arles by Valentinian the Younger, and therefore at the latest in the year 392, the very year of his death.

[36] But, you will say, there will without doubt stand in the way of the Notitia mentioned above being believed to have been written at the end of the fourth century under the name of castrum, the flourishing state about this time of the city of the Rauraci, which, plundered by the Vandals, as Schoepflin writes in various places, only in the year 408, stripped of the name and rights of a city, is ascribed only to the castra in the often-mentioned Notitia; whence it follows that that Notitia was composed after the year 408. That Augusta Rauracorum existed in a very flourishing state at the time when Ammianus Marcellinus was producing his books, that is, about the year 384 or 385, I willingly admit with Schoepflin. For Ammianus speaks of Rauracum in these words, book 15, chap. 11: Among the Sequani we see the Bisontii and the Rauraci, stronger than many other towns. Which words, as appears, sufficiently indicate both the time at which Ammianus was composing his Work and how Rauracum and Besançon were then numbered among the splendid cities. Further, Schoepflin, after Chifflet, who prepared the Life of Ammianus Marcellinus prefixed to his books, judged that this time of composition was to be placed between the year 383 and 390, induced by these reasons. Ammianus, he says, Alsatia Illustrata, page 175, in the Notes, wrote his books of histories after the death of Gratian, who perished in the year 383, and before the ruin of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, which he mentions as still standing, which was demolished in the year 389 by the edict of Theodosius. From which words it becomes not obscurely clear that Rauracum, about this time just indicated by Schoepflin and by Chifflet, was with Besançon a stronger city of the Sequani, and that it had not then been plundered by the barbarians. But since the Strasbourg professor, relying on no authority of historians at all, but writing in the manner of conjecture, asserted that its plundering happened in the year 408, and indeed in the Vandal invasion, he does not rightly argue from this that Augusta Rauracorum, weakened by the Vandals in the year 408, was afterwards relegated to the class of castra.

[37] ascribed before the year 408; And indeed that this city was already called only by the name of a castellum about the year 404 is revealed by the words of Eunapius, whose work is inserted in the Byzantine collection of the Paris edition among the excerpts of Embassies, page 27, which I transcribe here: Julian, moving from the Nemetes to the Rhine, for he was already among the Rauraci, which is a castellum of the Romans (so Schoepflin rightly renders the Greek word φρούριον, which signifies castellum, not colony); and hence, in the year in which Eunapius of Sardis was writing his composition, Augusta Rauracorum was already called not by the name of a city but of a castellum; but in assigning this year the Strasbourg professor was deceived, asserting that this author lived in the time of the emperor Gratian, which the learned man would not have written if what Photius has about him in his Bibliotheca, page 169 and following, had occurred to his memory. For these are the words of Photius: Eunapius draws the beginning of his narration from the empire of Claudius Caesar … and ends in the times of Honorius and Arcadius, the children of Theodosius, so as to set the end of his history then, when Arsacius, John Chrysostom having been driven out, occupied the throne of the bishop. Eunapius therefore lived not only in the empire of Gratian, but also in that of Honorius and Arcadius, down to the year 404, in which, as Pagi in the Critica, Tillemont, Mémoires of Ecclesiastical History, tome XI, page 238 and following, and the last editor of the Works of St. John Chrysostom, tome 13, page 155, write, Arsacius invaded the see of St. John, driven into exile: and therefore already in that year, a disaster having been received, not indeed from the Vandals in the year 408, Augusta Rauracorum had been ascribed to the castella. But in what year this ancient city received this disaster I would not dare to say: for since at the end of the 4th century the Alemanni harassed the Gallic shores of the Rhine with continual irruptions, it could easily have happened that after the death of Gratian, Theodosius still reigning, it was plundered and under the empire of Valentinian numbered among the castra. Hence the disaster of Rauracum and the composition of the Notitia of the provinces of Gaul are to be fixed at about this time.

[38] against Schoepflin, that St. Pantalus, Rauracum having been worn down, However that may be, it is established from what Schoepflin has and from what I have just discussed that Rauracum was diminished by various disasters at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the following one and ascribed to the castra, but that Basel, born from the ashes of Rauracum, at that time obtained the rights of cities and was ascribed to the cities in the Notitia of the provinces: such was the state of each place when Pantalus, who lost his life for Christ by martyrdom in the year 451, was taken up as bishop to administer the see of the Rauraci. Given the straits into which the city of the Rauraci had then been brought, and given the flourishing state of Basel, what, I ask, remained for Pantalus to do but to turn aside to the city of Basel, Rauracum having been weakened by so many and such great calamities, as we have seen. Nay, it was entirely necessary that he should stay at Basel, because in these most wretched times this alone existed in Upper Alsace as a city not far distant from Rauracum, the only one, I say, which could become the seat of a bishop, or in which, the chief city, formerly the seat of the bishop, having been diminished, Pantalus might establish his dwelling. For what reason, then, he was called now prelate of Basel, now of the Rauraci, is understood without difficulty.

[39] But what is not to be passed over in silence, [and indeed could stay at Basel before the middle of the 5th century; and so it is concluded that he is called Bishop of Basel.] and what the students of Ecclesiastical History will not with difficulty observe, is that the episcopate of St. Pantalus must of necessity be marked before the middle of the fifth century, in such a way that, this epoch being rejected, all the others seem to collapse. For if you fix it at the end of the 3rd or 4th century, Rauracum then being numbered, as appears from Ammianus Marcellinus, book 15, chap. 11, among the stronger towns of the Sequanian province, there will be no reason by which the holy Bishop, moved from his see established at Rauracum, should turn aside to Basel, which had not yet obtained the name and right of a city. But if you say that St. Pantalus was set over the church of the Rauraci after the year 450, then the argument proposed by Schoepflin will press, by which he contends that, the banks of the Upper Rhine having been overthrown and the cities of the whole of Alsace plundered and destroyed, there was then no bishop set over the church of the Rauraci. Therefore, that all things may be rightly reconciled with the state of Rauracum and of Basel, this one thing certainly remains to be said, namely that St. Pantalus undertook to rule the church of the Rauraci before the middle of the 5th century, and fixed his dwelling at Basel, which had then obtained the rights and name of cities, Rauracum having been either overthrown or greatly weakened. And so the whole mass of difficulties built by Schoepflin, and undeservedly drawn from the state of either city, will fall: which will become more and more evident when I shall have discoursed of the origin and character of the episcopate of the church of the Rauraci.

[40] So many and such celebrated disputations have been held in these most recent times about the preaching of the Gospel among the Alsatians, Therefore, all these things having been weighed, that is, about the time at which the light of the faith, through the efforts of apostolic men, shone upon the inhabitants of Germania Prima, that it is not worth while to put this question, so often already treated by learned men, on the anvil here again. Here, then, I shall not inquire whether in the 1st or 2nd century there were some Christians on the shores of the Upper Rhine: but, supposing that in these first times of the Christian religion there were those who in these parts gave their names to Christ, I shall not on that account think that that assembly, of whatever kind, destitute of bishops, priests or other ministers, is to be called by the name of a church, whose beginnings among the Upper Alsatians seem to me to be fixed only in the third or fourth century. What is commonly asserted of the origin of most churches must also be said of the beginnings of the church of the Rauraci: entirely uncertain is the time at which the Gospel was announced in these parts of the Rhine, nor are those apostolic men any better known through whom our Alsatians came to the knowledge of Christ: whether perhaps the bishops of Besançon, first of all, as heralds of the divine word, laid the foundations of the church of the Rauraci? Although this opinion does not lack some likelihood, yet since it rests on no certain foundation, I cannot hold it as true and certain, and therefore I think it is to be placed within the class of the probable.

[41] the episcopal see of the Rauraci Only two things appear to me as not discordant with truth: namely that Augusta Rauracorum was erected into an episcopal see, and that indeed before the 5th century; the first is readily admitted by Beatus Rhenanus, Le Cointe and a great many learned men, nor does Schoepflin himself raise any doubt about it, who in various places asserts that the see of the Rauraci was translated to Basel, although, while he undertakes to overthrow the chair of Strasbourg by various arguments, he does not observe that the episcopate of the Rauraci could be overturned by the same. But let Schoepflin tell me, I should like (for this above all I should be eager to know), with what instruments of reasons and proofs he would establish the episcopate of the Rauraci, if anyone should either attack its truth or at least raise some doubt about it? There exists none at all, as far as I know, to be adduced by Schoepflin, who contends that both Justinian and Pantalus are to be relegated among the fictitious bishops. However that may be, since there is no controversy among the learned about the truth of the see of the Rauraci, I have to prove the other point, namely that this see was erected before the fifth century.

[42] [not in the 5th century, in which Rauracum, weakened by the barbarians, had been inscribed among the castra,] And indeed that Rauracum was adorned with the dignity of an episcopal see before the year 451 no one

will deny. For to what end would a see have then been fixed at Augusta Rauracorum, which, not only inscribed among the cities and little towns, but laid on the ground by the Huns, lay overwhelmed in its own ruins? Nor would I say that this happened at the beginning of the 5th century and under the empire of Honorius; for by a wise law in the council of Sardica, held in the year 347, and in the synod of Laodicea, celebrated in the year 324 or at least before the year 400, it had been provided that the sees of bishops should be erected not in castra or little towns, but in principal cities. Since the decrees of these councils especially serve my purpose, I transcribe here the words in which they are conceived, taken from Labbe's Councils, tome 2, col. 653, canon 6. Licence to ordain a bishop is not to be given everywhere: for if suddenly either some village or a small city, for which one presbyter is enough, should wish a bishop to be ordained for itself, to the end that the name of bishop and the authority of the highest honour may become cheap; those invited from another province ought not to make a bishop, except either in cities which have had bishops, or if any city or place is so populous as to deserve to have a bishop. The same is contained in canon 57 of the council of Laodicea, inserted in tome 1 of Labbe's Councils, cols. 1506 and 1514. That bishops ought not to be established in little villages and in the fields, or (in villages and in country districts), as is read in the version of Hervet. The same custom, namely of fixing the see of a bishop only in cities, flourished in the 5th century and the following times among the Easterners and the Westerners, that is, the Africans, as is clear from letter 87 of Pope St. Leo, brought into tome 3 of the same Councils, col. 1393, and from letter 1 of Zachary, the supreme Pontiff, to Boniface, published in tome 1 of the Councils of Gaul published by Sirmond, page 532.

[43] And therefore, since Augusta Rauracorum before the year 404, as I showed in num. 32 and following, stripped of the rights and name of cities, was ascribed only to the little towns or castella, it becomes clear from the reasons adduced in the preceding numbers that it was taken up as an episcopal see in the third or fourth century, in which it was in a most flourishing state and held, with Besançon, the stronger place among the towns of the Sequani, [but was erected about the middle of the 4th century or about then, and afterwards translated to Basel.] And indeed about the middle of the 4th century, as I am about to say, Justinian occurs as bishop of the church of the Rauraci. But whether he is to be inscribed as the first prelate of this church I would not dare to say: but since he is the first inserted in the sacred Fasti, and no other appears in the third or the beginning of the fourth century, nothing prevents him from being called the first bishop of the Rauraci. These things, then, having been touched on about the beginnings of the episcopate of the Rauraci, what is to be said of the origin of the see of Basel is now drawn out without difficulty. For Augusta Rauracorum having been greatly worn down at the beginning of the 5th century and at length overthrown by the Huns in the year 451, the bishop of the Rauraci decided to fix at Basel, numbered among the cities under the empire of Honorius, a dwelling rather than the see of a bishop. The bishops who presided over the administration of this see in the 6th and 7th centuries, Augusta Rauracorum remaining buried together under its ashes, seem likewise to have resided at Basel, then rising from its ruins, following the footsteps of St. Pantalus. Hence the bishops of the Rauraci began to be called of Basel, from Basel, to which they had as it were translated the see; yet in such a way that in public Acts, or in the ancient monuments which survive, they were also called of the Rauraci, from Rauracum, the formerly principal city, where the see of the bishop had been erected, until, the name of Augusta Rauracorum having been effaced about the middle of the 8th century, they were named only of Basel.

[44] And this is sufficiently hinted by the ancient Catalogue of the Bishops of Basel, Hence in the following centuries they were called Bishops of Basel. copied by Martène from the papers of the monastery of Münster in Alsace and woven into tome 3 of the Anecdota, col. 1385, which I think was composed in the 11th century, since it exhibits inscribed in the last place Bishop Beringer, set over the church of Basel, by the witness of Sudan, author of the Basilea Sacra, page 167 and following. And the words of this List are these: Walaus, archbishop of Basel, under Pope Gregory III, who, according to the old Catalogue of the Supreme Pontiffs published by Papebroch, is asserted to have sat at Rome from the year 731 to 742. But the author of this Catalogue, using that word archbishop, seems to have written with a word not indeed right. For Walaus or Walanus is here written archbishop, certainly not because, as a metropolitan bishop, he had others subject to him, or because he sat as the first of all the prelates at Basel, but because, his predecessors having been called now from Rauracum, the ancient see of the bishops, now from Basel, where they had resided for many centuries, in this eighth century, the name of Augusta Rauracorum having been entirely effaced, he was called of Basel: only in this sense, as it seems, could Walaus have been named archbishop by the author of the Catalogue. Now we must treat of the first bishops of the Rauraci.

§ IV. Of the first bishops of the church of the Rauraci, and of some monuments by which their episcopate is supported.

[Among the Bishops of the Rauraci in the first place Justinian, who was present at the synod of Cologne, whose] Many things having been disputed about the episcopal chair of the Rauraci, what I am going to say here about the first bishops of this see and about the time in which each of them ruled this church will perhaps contribute not a little to elucidating the history of St. Pantalus. But to declare, at the very threshold of the disputation, what the case is, all things are so either full of rocks or wrapped in darkness that to one inquiring about the first bishops of the church of the Rauraci no slight difficulties to be unravelled come up on every side: almost no monument by which the episcopate of Justinian, of St. Pantulus and of others is established, about which a controversy has not arisen among the learned or a dissertation been instituted: each therefore occurs here to be examined by me with fitting diligence, so that, it having been weighed, the reader may see who were the bishops set over the church of the Rauraci, and in what order they are to be placed in the tables of this church. The episcopate of St. Pantalus, then, having been asserted, and his martyrdom marked at the year 451, we shall begin from Justinian, who was present at the council of Cologne, celebrated in the year 346 in the cause of Euphrates, prelate of Cologne, cast from his see for denying the divinity to Jesus Christ, and published in tome 2 of the Councils, col. 615, and who expressed his sentence in these words: Justinian the bishop said: From the letter of the clerics of Cologne, and also of the brethren established in the several castra, whose letters and subscriptions are held, we have learned that Euphratas is a blasphemer, who denies that Christ the Saviour our Lord is God. Wherefore I too consent that he is condemned by the Catholic Church. Thus Justinian, who at the beginning of the Acts of this council is written bishop of the Raurici.

[46] the truth here But since there is no slight controversy among the learned about the truth of this council, and since men of no lowest note regard its Acts as suspect or even supposititious, while others no less celebrated for learning defend them as true, I have therefore thought it worth while to reprint here, expressed as it were in summary, the reasons by which the truth of this council is established, and which Grandidier, in the third Dissertation prefixed to the History of the Church of Strasbourg, and Bye, in his Commentary on St. Sanctinus, bishop of Verdun, inserted in tome V of October, page 594 and nums. 37 to 48, propose in clear order; and first indeed I begin my discourse from the chronological notes put on the Acts of the synod of Cologne. The notes are these, which I transcribe: After the consulate of Amantius and Albinus, on the 4th day before the Ides of May. And therefore after the year 345, in which Amantius and Albinus had proceeded as consuls, and indeed, as I think, in the year 346, on the 12th day of May, that is, on Monday, on which, according to the Paschal tables, the 12th day of May fell in that year, the council of Cologne was celebrated. Nor is it found anywhere, says Bye, praised above, num. 38, page 595, to sin against the form prescribed by the ancient canons of the Church for the celebration of councils; and since this is so, and therefore its Acts, considered in themselves, are furnished with absolutely all the characters of truth which are required in genuine and sincere Acts of Councils, to what end should we hold them, or the council whose they are, as a pure and simple fiction?

[47] Nor was the council of Cologne unknown to certain writers of the Church: it is established from various authors for there mentioned it, besides Heriger, abbot of Lobbes, who, by the witness of Henschen in his Commentary on St. Servatius, bishop of Maastricht, customarily venerated on the 13th day of May, flourished on the border of the 10th and 11th centuries, or rather besides Giles, monk of Orval, who in the course of the 13th century enlarged the compositions of Heriger, as may be read in the book On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of Tongres, published by Chapeaville in the year 1612, page 33 and following: Berthar, who, according to d'Achery, Spicilegium, tome 12, preface, pages 11 and 12 of the first edition, and the writers of the Histoire littéraire de la France, tome 6, page 154 and following, prepared the History of the Bishops of Verdun about the year 887; Lupus, bishop of Châlons, who, by the witness of Henschen illustrating the Acts of St. Maximin, bishop of Trier, at the 29th day of May, lived in the year 839; the anonymous author who arranged the Life of the same holy Bishop under King Pepin and a whole century older than Lupus, of whom the authors of the Histoire littéraire de la France, tome 4, page 192: that synod, therefore, was not unknown to the writers of the Gallican church from the 9th century, nay from the 8th century, and therefore was not, as pleased Hartzheim in the Preface prefixed to the Councils of Germany, page 22, a fiction of the 9th or 10th century.

[48] But those who are opposed to the truth of this council, namely the writers of the new Gallia Christiana in various places, against learned men but especially in the List of the Bishops of Cologne which they composed, tome 3, col. 622, Calles, author of the Annals of the Church of Germany, at this year, Schoepflin, Alsatia Illustrata, page 344 and following, and Hartzheim, who collected the Councils of Germany into one, attack the credit of the synod of Cologne with this one argument, namely that Euphratas, thrown down from his see by eighteen bishops of Gaul in the year 346, nevertheless in the following year occurs among the Catholic fathers of the council of Sardica, in such a way that chief parts in treating the affairs of the faith and of the Church were assigned to him, who is read to have been delegated to the emperor Constantius, that he might recall to their sees the bishops thrust into exile for the faith. How difficult further these things are to understand everyone certainly will see! Such, I say, is the argument which they hurl as most powerful against the truth of the council of Cologne. Even if it were of such a kind, says Bye, page 595, nums. 41 and 42, that it could be washed away by no reason at all, the Acts of the same council would not on that account forthwith have to be rejected as supposititious. For these, Bye continues, as I have already shown, if they are considered in themselves, include absolutely no mark of falsity;

nor does it rarely happen that, although the difficulties objected which hinder some deed from being believed seem scarcely, nay not even scarcely, able to be solved, yet presently, if all the circumstances which are joined with that deed and were before unknown become known, they vanish. Wherefore it may not undeservedly be judged that this too would take place, if all the circumstances which pertain to this synod, and are now still unknown, should become known. The other reasons with which Bye tries to solve the knot of the proposed difficulty let the reader go through in the aforesaid Commentary, for since I have no others to add to them, let it suffice me here only to cite them.

[49] [it] But Henschen too, discoursing at the 13th of May about St. Servatius, num. 2, page 210, strives to clear of heresy the Euphratas of Cologne sent to Constantius by the fathers of the council of Sardica. For, proving that after Sirmond some error had crept into the nomenclature of cities and bishops, he adds what I now transcribe here: Let it be permitted to us, with the reader's indulgence, to indicate that we judge another name also to have crept into the same text, either falsely substituted by some smatterer or deformed far from the truth by an unskilled copyist; namely that of the bishop of Cologne himself, wrapped perhaps by the other bishops in the council in deep silence, that the reputation of that one might be consulted, or wrongly written for the name of Euphaxius or Euphrasius or some other similar one: of Euphratas, I say, a man both most learned and most upright, nay one whom we judge to have uncovered the wickednesses of the other, and to have been substituted in the place of the deposed one. But, says Schoepflin, page 335, an ingenious medicine, which does not heal the wound. For that Euphratas who was present at the council of Sardica is described by Athanasius as worn out with old age and conspicuous for singular constancy and holiness, which do not fit a new Euphratas. There is added that the Acts of Servatius, prelate of Tongres, ascribe to the deposed Euphratas not another Euphratas but Severinus as successor.

[50] those attacking To this last difficulty Bye answers in num. 43 of the aforesaid Commentary, which it will not irk the reader to see. Nor certainly does the first argument of Schoepflin, just transcribed by me, press much: for St. Athanasius does not write that that Euphratas, bishop of Cologne, whom they report to have been delegated to the emperor by the fathers of the synod of Sardica, had been taken up as bishop many years before: but, even if he had been elected to administer this church only one year before, why he could not have been conspicuous in age and morals I certainly do not see: for he who received the place of Euphratas, cast from his see on account of heresy, had to be such that by virtue and prudence he might more easily heal the sheep infected with the poison of heresy and bring them back to Catholic doctrine. I wonder that Hartzheim stirred up anew the argument, long since laid to rest, drawn from the origin of the Photinian heresy, to which Sirmond, both in the posthumous notes in Labbe, Councils, tome 2, col. 1805, and in the disputation on the Photinian heresy, inserted in tome 4 of his Works, page 395 and following, and Pagi in the Critica at the year 347, num. 5, had supplied a clear answer. Their reasons Bye wove anew into his Commentary, which it will not be beside the point to read in nums. 39 and 40, page 595. But let it be permitted to me also to press Calles and Hartzheim, who reject the Acts of the synod of Cologne as spurious, with this argument.

[51] the arguments, by which Among the bishops, seventy in number, who subscribed to the council of Sardica, thirty-four are mentioned as having come out of the Gauls, who had come together at Sardica in the year 347 to assert the Catholic dogma against the new contrivances of the Arians. Further, of these bishops of the Gauls twenty-four occur who are read to have given their voice to the council of Cologne: for their names, although sometimes vitiated by the carelessness of the copyists, are nevertheless expressed in such a way that one can recognize them without difficulty: this one difference only lies between them, that those subscribing to the synod of Cologne expressed the names of the cities over which the bishops presided, which are omitted in the subscriptions of the synod of Sardica: and yet Calles and Hartzheim, praised above, in the Preface prefixed to the Councils of Germany, page XXII, and tome 1, page 8, fix those bishops who were present at the council of Sardica to entirely the same sees over which the Acts of the synod of Cologne, which they reject as spurious or supposititious, exhibit them as having presided.

[52] But by what reason or by what authority do those who take away all credit from the Acts of the council of Cologne, and think that not even slight credit is to be given to the writers praised in num. 47 who have mentioned that council in their compositions, judge that Amandus, for example, sat at Strasbourg, or Justinian at Rauracum, rather than in other cities? is here answered. I shall conclude, therefore, this whole controversy about the council of Cologne with the words of Grandidier, rendered into Latin by Bye in the aforesaid Commentary, num. 44, in this manner: In this conflict of likelihoods, must one not pronounce for the truth of the Acts of the synod of Cologne, which, considered in themselves, exhibit nothing by which they may be rendered suspect, and are moreover founded on the suffrage of all antiquity and the greater number of authors, as Petavius observed. Since, therefore, the synod of Cologne is to be judged to have truly taken place in the year 346, it follows that Justinian, bishop of the Raurici, who is mentioned as having been present at it, then administered the church of the Rauraci and flourished about the middle of the fourth century.

[53] It is drawn from what has been said above, therefore, that St. Pantalus, as successor of Justinian, In the second place St. Pantalus. undertook to rule the church of the Rauraci before the middle of the fifth century. Nor undeservedly was he called by some bishop of Basel, who, the city of the Rauraci having been diminished about the year 404 and ascribed only to the castella, seems first to have fixed the see at Basel. That he was compelled in these most wretched times to migrate to Cologne, and there endured death for Christ in the year 451, is hinted by the tomb dug up in the year 1155 or the following, as I showed in the preceding numbers. Nor may it be conjectured from the most wretched state of Alsace that anyone was substituted in his place, and therefore that the see of the Rauraci was vacant for many years. For truly, the shore of the Upper Rhine having been laid waste, the other cities of Alsace overthrown, Basel itself reduced to the lowest in the Attilan irruption, what bishops could then have been set over the ruling of the churches? That the same happened in various sees of the Gauls Grandidier observes, many examples being brought forward, in his History of the Church of Strasbourg, page 153, tome 1: and therefore he inscribes in the sacred tables of this church only two bishops of the Rauraci from the year 346 to 511, namely Justinian and Adelphius, whom afterwards, in the History of Alsace which is sweating under the press, the learned man, joined to me most closely in friendship and especially to be regarded for his urbanity, judged in a letter given to me on the 28th day of November of the year 1786 to be struck out. But whether rightly will presently become clear from what is to be said.

§ V. The series of the Bishops of the Rauraci or of Basel.

[Over the church of the Rauraci, widowed for many years, Adelphius is set, whose name] That anyone at once took the place of St. Pantalus, slain for Christ in the year 451, does not appear to me: but I would more readily believe that the see of the Rauraci was vacant for several years, moved especially by this reason, that in the Attilan irruption, the whole shore of the Upper Rhine having been laid waste, as I have just said, and the inhabitants of this region dispersed or slaughtered by the sword, by the witness of Schoepflin himself, no bishop seems then to have been set over the church of the Rauraci. It is no wonder, then, if, the middle of the 5th century having elapsed, the name of no bishop of the Rauraci or of Basel is seen inserted in the Fasti of this church. In the third place, therefore, Adelphius seems to me to be inscribed, who in the year 511 subscribed to the first council of Orléans, and committed his place to Asclepius the presbyter in the second council celebrated in the same city. For the subscriptions of Adelphius and of Asclepius the presbyter, subjoined to these two councils published by Surius, have thus: Adelphius of the Rauraci. Asclepius, presbyter, for Adelphius, bishop of the Rauraci. From which it comes about that Adelphius undertook to administer the church of the Rauraci from at least the year 511 to 533, according to the codices which Surius and Binius used in publishing these two councils.

[55] [in the first two synods of Orléans according to the edition of Surius and Binius.] But with this reading accepted by Surius and Binius the codices of Pithou, of Beauvais, of Rheims, of Corbie and others do not agree, which Sirmond confesses he used in publishing the first and second councils of Orléans, in the Notes subjoined to the subscription of Adelphius: nor does there agree with it the subscription of Adelphius drawn from a copy preserved in the royal Library of Paris and copied in the ninth century, which is mentioned, in his letter given to me on the 20th day of April of this year 1787, by Lord Daniel Labbat, monk of the Congregation of St. Maur, who is shortly going to give to print a new edition of the Councils of Gaul: for truly it will help here to subjoin the variant Readings of the codices, pertaining to the subscription of Adelphius subjoined to the 1st council of Orléans and drawn from the Sirmondian Notes, that the reader may be able to pass a more certain judgment on all these things. Adelphius, bishop of the church of the Pictavi; so the codex of Rheims, of Beauvais and others; namely the Saint-Germain and the Vatican, cited in the Bollandian papers: From the city of Poitiers, Adelphius the bishop: but the copy of Pithou, that of Corbie, the royal one of Paris, etc., have thus: Adelphius, of the city of Ratiatica, of Ratiate, of the church of Ratiatica, or of Rotiate, bishop of Riatensis; which words Ratiate or Ratiatensis, and similar ones, the learned commonly judge are to be understood of Ratiastum, formerly a celebrated city among the people of Poitou, of which Ptolemy speaks: Sirmond, Labbe, the editors of the new Gallia Christiana in the List of the Bishops of Poitiers, the abbé Belley, who published a learned disputation on that ancient city of Ratiate woven into the memoirs of the royal Academy of inscriptions, tome 19, page 722 and following, d'Anville, writer of the New Notitia of the Gauls, page 539 and following, and some other authors; so that, according to all these, Adelphius is to be inserted among the bishops of the church of Poitiers, who, as appears, sometimes took their name in the subscriptions put on the councils from Ratiate or from the city of Ratiatica. These things laid down, the whole sum of the difficulty therefore consists in this, that we inquire here which reading is to be preferred, that taken from the edition of Surius and Binius or from the various codices praised by Sirmond, or which of all these is rather to be retained.

[56] But first it occurs to one to wonder with Sirmond, in the Notes subjoined to the subscriptions put on the first and second council of Orléans, deservedly to be preferred to the others, is read put: how great is the variety either in the order and series, or in the names of the bishops and cities! so that it is evident that the genuine subscriptions of these bishops have not come down to us, but were inserted and disturbed at the pleasure or capacity of the copyists. Further, to dwell only on the subscription of Adelphius, his name is read in the various copies of the first council of Orléans praised by Sirmond or laid up in the Bollandian Museum now in the 12th, now in the 14th, now in the 15th place; nay, it also holds the tenth place in the manuscript Collection of Councils composed by St. Isidore of Seville, which from various manuscripts of venerable antiquity of the VIII, IX, X, XI and XII century

codices Father Burriel, S. J., collected, collated and corrected in the year 1755, and which the lords de Santander, residing at Brussels, most courteously permitted me to go through. Nor is there less diversity in the names of the cities over which Adelphius is said to have presided: for the codices of Surius and Binius fix him to the city of the Rauraci, whom various copies of Sirmond and the royal codex of Paris inscribe to the city of Ratiatica and to the bishops of Poitiers. Which reading, finally, taken from all these codices, is to be retained as the stronger? That of Surius and Binius, as appears more probable to me, and indeed deservedly.

[57] The codices which Surius and Binius used in publishing their councils [and so, the words Ratiatum and Ratiatensis having been used by the copyists for Rauracum and Rauracensis, Adelphius] fix to the city of Rauricum the bishop Adelphius, whose name appears put on the first two synods of Orléans: nor indeed does anything in this seem discordant with truth; for truly the city of Rauricum had long since been erected into an episcopal see, nor does any difficulty arise, as it seems to me, from the chronological Notes; there is no reason, therefore, why we should not hold the Binian and Surian reading of these two councils as sincere and genuine. But also in the various codices in which Adelphius is called bishop of the city of Ratiatica, or of Ratiate, or Ratiatensis or Riatensis, I would the more willingly believe that Rauracensis or of the city of Rauriaca should rather be read, because this word could without difficulty have been changed by smattering copyists into the other and so written: for there is not so great a discrepancy between the two words that the one could not easily be taken and used for the other; especially since in parchments partly worn or not a little effaced by the injury of time those words city of Raurica or bishop of the Rauraci may have occurred: for the copyists, who did not know that any city of this name had been erected into an episcopal see, judged that those words Ratiatica, Ratiatensis or Ratiate, which they knew to be the head of a not ignoble district among the Pictones, were to be substituted; especially if those copyists were either natives of the region of the Pictones or copied their codices among the Pictones or not far distant from them. From this first error another, as it seems, arose: other copyists, finding those words city of Ratiatica or of Ratiate, bishop of Riatensis woven into the parchments, and persuaded that this ancient city never enjoyed an episcopal see, but taught rather that it was contained within the limits of the diocese of Poitiers, inserted into their codices those words, of Poitiers, bishop of the Pictavi, as is read in one or two manuscripts. The various editors of the Councils would have brought not a little help to my conjectures if they had taught us the age of the codices which they used in publishing their councils; for perhaps, inspecting them, I would have judged that the copies in which the words Ratiatica, of Ratiate and Riatensis are woven in are older and of better note than the others in which Adelphius is written bishop of the city of Poitiers or of the Pictavi.

[58] not of the city of Ratiatica, never erected into the see of a bishop, but, However that may be, I bring myself to think that the subscription of Adelphius, put on the 1st council of Orléans and taken from the various codices mentioned by Sirmond, in which he is called bishop of the city of Ratiatica or Ratiatensis, is to be understood of the city of Rauricum, and not of the town of Ratiastum, ancient among the Pictones, as the abbé Belley praised above proves, from this: 1° because the city of Ratiastica was never raised into an episcopal see; 2° because no bishop of Poitiers, as appears from their List or from their various subscriptions put on councils celebrated from the 4th century, in which St. Hilary sat, down to our times, took his name from that city of Ratiastica; from which it comes about that I am readily brought to think that a fault crept into that word Ratiatica or Ratiacensis, and that it was put by smattering copyists for the city of Rauricum.

[59] whatever is here opposed to the contrary from the example of other churches But, you will say with the abbé Belley and some other learned men, the bishops of Chartres, as appears from the codex of Pithou praised by Sirmond in the Notes on the 1st council of Orléans, were sometimes called from the castrum of Dunum, and so too those of Coutances in the 6th century were named from Briovera: it is no wonder, then, that those of Poitiers were named from the city of Ratiatica. In some codices, I admit, but of inferior note, the bishop of Chartres, Aventinus by name, was called from the castrum of Dunum, although in the other copies of this council he was called prelate of Chartres or of the church of Chartres: so too the bishops of Chartres are read to have been called from Briovera in some copies praised by Sirmond. But in certain others that word Brioverensis or from Briovera is read so added to the name of the bishops that it at once appears inserted by the copyists. But the bishops of Chartres seem to me to have been called from the castrum of Dunum, as those of Coutances from Briovera, because Dunum and Briovera belonged to their episcopal domain, or, as they call it, to the bishop's table, and therefore the bishops of Chartres and of Coutances, enticed for the most part by the pleasantness of the places, had their see, or rather their residence, in them. For that Briovera belonged to the prelate of Coutances Valois proves by clear monuments, Notitia of the Gauls, page 98. And that the castrum of Dunum was in the jurisdiction of the bishops of Chartres is hinted not obscurely by the letter of Papolus of Chartres to the bishops gathered at Paris in the year 578, woven into the Councils of Gaul, tome 1, page 350, in which Papolus suppliantly asks them that his cause against Promotus, who, set up as bishop in the castrum of Dunum, seized in similar condition the little property of the church, as much as is established to be in that district. But from no instrument, as far as I know, is it clear that the city of Ratiatum belonged to the domain of the bishop of Poitiers: there is therefore a great difference between those of Chartres and Coutances and those of Poitiers; and therefore no reason exists by which these could have been called from Ratiastum or Ratiatenses; but another difficulty presently arises, which it is worth while to solve here.

[60] If the subscription of Adelphius, and whatever is found about him in the first two synods of Orléans, are to be referred to the church of the Rauraci, or from the kings how could it come about, you will say, that, the inhabitants of the region of Rauricum, that is, the Upper Alsatians, being comprehended within the limits of the Burgundian kingdom, Adelphius, bishop of the Rauraci, in the years 511 and 533 should have been present at councils celebrated at Orléans by order of the kings of the Franks, who at that time were not a little suspected by the Burgundians, or have committed his place in them to a presbyter? But this cannot be said of the bishops of Ratiate or of Poitiers; since they without doubt then stood in the allegiance of the kings of the Franks. But is it so evident and certain that the Rauraci lived within the borders of the Burgundians as the 6th century was growing up that no doubt can be raised about this? For no slight doubt underlies me on that point of disputation. And indeed Schoepflin, to whom the periods of Alsatian History were so well known, proves, not in one place of the Alsatia Illustrata but especially on pages 226, 227, 626 and following, that the Rauraci, at least after the irruption of Attila had been accomplished, and that after the year 451, were not under the dominion of the Burgundian kings.

[61] But lest I seem to repeat here what was discussed by Schoepflin, is here opposed from the diversity let it be permitted only to argue from his discussions what I subjoin: first, that the Burgundians occupied the part near the Rhine until, driven out by other barbarians and in the year 451 by the Huns, they contracted their seats into Helvetia and the neighbouring regions. Secondly, that, the Burgundians having been thus destroyed or put to flight by Attila, Upper Alsace received new guests, namely the Alemanni, who, having dwelt along the shores of the Rhine for many years, at length in the year 495, routed by Clovis the Great at Tolbiac, passed into the allegiance of the kings of the Franks; and hence Upper Alsace, that is, the Rauracian land, which had obeyed first the Burgundians, then the Alemanni, was subjected to the dominion of the Franks. These things laid down, absolutely nothing prevents the name of Adelphius, bishop of the church of the Rauraci, from appearing inscribed on the first two councils celebrated at Orléans by order of the kings of the Franks in the years [ ] and 533; and so the difficulty drawn against Adelphius of the Rauraci from the diversity of the kings will fall.

[62] Among the Bishops of the Rauraci, then, Adelphius, is to be called bishop of the church of Rauricum. and indeed according to his own subscription in the first council of Orléans and that of Asclepius the presbyter, acting in his place in the second council held at Orléans, both which subscriptions, taken from the Surian and Binian edition of these councils, fix Adelphius as bishop to the church of the Rauraci, seems to be inscribed. Grandidier had inscribed him among them in composing the History of the church of Strasbourg, tome 1, page 153, who afterwards, in the New History of Alsace which is sweating under the press, judged him to be struck out, led, as I think, by the authority of the variant readings taken from the codices praised by Sirmond. What is to be thought of all these things I have hinted enough and more than enough in the preceding numbers. Having weighed, therefore, the reasons by which each opinion about the see of that Adelphius is supported, and having considered the variant readings which pertain to the subscription both of our Bishop in the first council of Orléans and of Asclepius acting in his place in the second council gathered at Orléans, from the various copies, whether praised by Surius, Binius, Sirmond, or drawn from the royal codex of Paris, the Surian and Binian edition, as corrected and more amended, seemed to me to be preferred and therefore retained. Although the opposite opinion does not lack some likelihood, I nevertheless embrace the other as more probable. But something more certain occurs for me to say about Ragnacarius.

[63] Ragnacarius, bishop in the 7th century, Although only the Acts of St. Eustasius, second abbot of Luxeuil, who died in the year 625, of whom in this Work at the 29th of March, mention Ragnacarius, they are, as it seems to me, of such authority in establishing his episcopate that no one can deny them assent. For he who committed them to writing, namely Jonas, professed the monastic life in the monastery of Bobbio, built by St. Columbanus, first abbot of Luxeuil, as he himself hints in the Preface to the Life of the same holy Abbot published by Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, page 6, and, as appears from several places of the Acts of SS. Eustasius and Attala, disciples of St. Columbanus, excerpted, lived in the time of St. Eustasius. That he flourished in this seventh century is proved in various places by Henschen at the 10th day of March, illustrating the Acts of St. Attala, num. 2; Mabillon, who put the composition of the same biographer about SS. Columbanus, Attala and Eustasius into his Work just praised; the writers of the Histoire littéraire de la France, tome 3, page 603 and following; and finally Ceillier, History of Ecclesiastical Writers, tome 17, page 657, prove by undoubted arguments that Jonas, the first biographer of St. Eustasius, was also contemporary with Ragnacarius, who was formed in virtues and learning under the discipline of Eustasius, abbot of Luxeuil: and hence the reader himself will understand without difficulty how much credit is to be given to that writer when he speaks either of St. Eustasius or of Ragnacarius his disciple.

[64] [who] Further, the words of Jonas, the biographer of St. Eustasius,

which serve my purpose, taken from his Life published by Henschen, num. 7, I transcribe here: For it was his (St. Eustasius's) zeal to instruct many by his eloquence. For many of them afterwards became prelates of churches, whose names are these: Chagnoald, bishop at Laon, Acharius, bishop of the Veromandui and of Noyon and of Tournai, Rachnarius, bishop of Augustodunum (otherwise Augustodonum) and of Basel. Audomarus was bishop of Boulogne, of the town of Thérouanne. So have the various copies of the same Acts, published by Surius or inserted in the Works of Bede, or collated by Henschen with the others which he praises in num. 2 of his Commentary prefixed to the Life of St. Eustasius; so that in all these copies or codices Ragnacarius is read to have sat at Basel, and indeed in the 7th century. Whence it is no wonder that Robert and the brothers Sainte-Marthe, in the Gallia Christiana which they composed, numbered him among the bishops of Basel, although Wurstisen in his Basel epitome assigned him no place. And indeed, since the words of the biographer are entirely clear, and since the various copies of the Acts of St. Eustasius which Surius, Henschen and Mabillon used exhibit Ragnacarius as set over the church of Basel, by what reason credit could be denied them I certainly do not see.

[65] Le Cointe, however, who at the year 748, num. CIV, fixes the beginnings of the church of Basel at about the middle of the eighth century, at Basel lest anything should detract from his opinion, asserts in express words that Ragnacarius, whom he maintains from the very Life of St. Eustasius just praised to have sat at Augustodunum, only preached the Gospel to the people of Basel, so that Ragnacarius seems only to have acted among the Rauraci, that is, the people of Basel, as a regionary bishop, as they call it, or apostolic man. But the biographer of St. Eustasius writes that Ragnacarius sat at Basel in entirely the same terms in which he teaches that Chagnoald was set over the people of Laon, Acharius over those of Noyon, and Audomarus over those of Thérouanne: since, therefore, all the learned, both the writers of lists and Le Cointe himself, argue from the very words of Jonas that those were bishops set over the inhabitants of these cities, and it is in fact clear in the terms, why does the author of the Ecclesiastical Annals of France judge that Ragnacarius is not to be inscribed among the bishops of Basel? Moreover, I can scarcely understand that a bishop of Autun, in this 7th century, having gone out of his city, hastened to the Upper Alsatians for the sake of preaching the Gospel, since neither in this part of the Upper Rhine, nor in the monasteries or churches situated in its neighbourhood, were there lacking monks or other apostolic men who, kindled with zeal for spreading the faith, might promote the Christian cause. I shall not, then, dwell longer on overturning this cavil.

[66] Although the time at which Ragnacarius undertook to administer the church of Basel that is, the church of the Rauraci, he profited, cannot be determined by certain calculation, yet since he was taught in the school of Luxeuil under the discipline of St. Eustasius II, abbot of this monastery, who in the year 625 exchanged this mortal life for the immortal, and lived in the time of St. Audomarus, who, according to Stilting at the 9th day of September, sacred to this holy bishop, was set over the church of Thérouanne about the year 628, and of Acharius, prelate of Noyon or Tournai, who, according to the writers of the new Gallia Christiana, tome 9, col. 981, bore the crozier of this church from about the year 630 to 639, it is permitted me to draw by probable argument that he was set over the church of Basel or of the Rauraci about the year 630. But about the epoch of the episcopate of Ragnacarius there is not so great a controversy among the learned: but whether he was set over the church of Autun, or sat as prelate only at Basel, the learned dispute with no slight heat of minds: for which cause this question occurs to be weighed with fitting care.

[67] Since the various copies of the Acts of St. Eustasius, which either Surius used in preparing his edition of them, nor therefore or of which Henschen made mention in num. 2 of his preliminary Commentary, everywhere exhibited Ragnacarius as set over the church of Autun and of Basel, writers celebrated for learning have hence asserted that he was set now over both these churches, now over that of Autun only. The Antwerp hagiographer, entering on a middle way and embracing the other opinion as more obvious, subjoined to the words of the biographer of St. Eustasius an annotation, which I transcribe here: Ragnacarius is believed to have migrated from Autun to Basel. And indeed, since it is entirely foreign to likelihood that the holy Man undertook to administer at once two churches separated by a long interval of journeys, I would more willingly believe, relying on this reason alone, that he passed to the chair of Basel only after giving up the episcopate of Autun: and therefore I would have gone over to Henschen's opinion, as being more obvious, had not the weights of reasons which I am presently going to adduce drawn me back.

[68] to the people of Autun, And 1° in these times migrations from one episcopal see to another were very rare, and seem scarcely to be admitted unless they rest on sufficient monuments. 2° If you weigh the words of the biographer of Eustasius more attentively, Regnacarius must be said to have sat at Autun at the same time in which Acharius, Chagnoald and Audomarus presided over the people of Noyon, Laon and Thérouanne; further, if you listen to the new Gallia Christiana, tome 9, cols. 511 and 981, to Suyskens, who had much about St. Chagnoald at the 4th day of September, to Stilting illustrating the Acts of St. Audomarus at the 9th day of September, to Châtelain in his General Catalogue of the Saints, and to the author of the Paris Martyrology at the 4th day of September and the 27th of November, Acharius undertook to govern the church of Noyon from about the year 630 to 639, Chagnoald that of Laon from before the year 625 to 632, and Audomarus that of the Morini from about the year 630 to 670: and therefore Ragnacarius, who was contemporary with Chagnoald of Laon, seems to have borne the crozier of Autun about the same time, that is, from about the year 625 to 640. But at least in the year 625 or 630, in which, as Labbe writes, Councils, tome 5, col. 1688 and following, the council of Rheims was celebrated, he was not sitting at Autun, but Auspicius, who together with Chagnoald was present at this synod; Ragnacarius, therefore, is not to be inscribed among the bishops of the Aedui about this time. And whether, this time having elapsed, he sat at Autun is clear to me from absolutely no monuments. But I hasten to another point which the words of the biographer of St. Eustasius recited in num. 64 show beforehand.

[69] as from the very text of Jonas Of the church over which Ragnacarius presided the biographer of St. Eustasius speaks in the same manner as of the others which Acharius and Audomarus had undertaken to administer: further, although in succeeding times Noyon and Tournai, Boulogne and Thérouanne were taken up into different episcopal sees, yet in this seventh century they coalesced as it were into one church, so that they formed one and the same diocese subject to one and the same bishop: therefore, that the biographer's own manner of speaking may be kept for him, I judge that he spoke of one and the same church, that is, of only a single diocese, over the ruling of which Ragnacarius had been set, named both from Augusta Rauracorum, formerly the chief chair of the bishop, and from Basel, and not of two churches separated by a long journey and subject to different metropolises (for who is ignorant that Augusta Aeduorum belonged to the metropolis of Lyons, Basel, that is, Augusta Rauracorum, to that of Besançon?), for the administration of which not even one and the same bishop could have been equal. Lest anyone believe that this opinion sits with me alone, I here subjoin the words of Schoepflin, in which he had proposed the same, Alsatia Illustrata, page 151. It came about, he says, by the ignorance of certain writers of the middle age, that they called this place, Augusta Rauracorum, since it always kept the name of Augusta, Augustodunum, which I see that Jonas of Bobbio, writer of the Life of St. Eustasius in the 7th century, and likewise the anonymous author of the Life of St. Agilus, abbot of Rebais in the diocese of Meaux, did. And therefore Schoepflin teaches in not obscure words that Jonas, namely, and the writer of the Life of St. Agilus understood by this word Augustodunum not the chief city of the Aedui but that formerly of the Rauraci. But what the Strasbourg professor supposes to have been done through ignorance, I think happened through the fault of the copyists.

[70] This is proved by the manuscripts of better note, namely the Cistercian and all the others, [and it is established from various codices praised by Mabillon and preserved at Luxeuil,] praised by Mabillon, as he himself admits in the notes to the Acts of St. Eustasius, Benedictine Century II, page 112, in which for the word Augustoduni is read Augustanae; to which word the editor subjoins this little note. So it is to be read with the manuscripts, he says, and not Augustoduni, as in Bolland. By the name Augustana understand Augusta Rauracorum, commonly Augt (near Basel, Basle), formerly a city, today reduced to a village. With these things noted by Mabillon various codices preserved in the Museum of Luxeuil agree, information of which was sent to me by the Rev. Father Dom Augustin Rousseau, Prior of this archmonastery, who in a letter given on the 6th day of January of the year 1787 extols with especial praises that ancient codex written towards the end of the 10th century, about the year 980 or 990, as appears; since it is believed to have been written by Adso himself or at least in his age, that is, as the authors of the Histoire littéraire de la France teach, tome 6, page 471 and following, at the end of the 10th century. And to this copy the greater credit seems to be given because, since it was made in the monastery of Luxeuil, not very distant from the city of Basel or Augusta, the copyists, in composing it, could fall into error about the word Augustana with greater difficulty.

[71] Nor does it stand in the way that into the Acts of St. Agilus, of whom in this Work at the 30th of August, is to be numbered, the same error has crept with which we have seen some copies of the Acts of St. Eustasius vitiated; for here occurs to be noted the carelessness either of the writer or at least of the copyists, who, taking this whole passage from the Acts of St. Eustasius, passed over in silence this word of Basel, which especially serves to establish the episcopate of Ragnacarius and which is read in all the copies: and thus the reading of the various codices published by Mabillon with others, and that which we have just related as drawn especially from the very ancient codex of Luxeuil, solves every difficulty arising from the word Augustoduni concerning the assertion of the episcopate of Ragnacarius among the people of Basel.

[72] But from that error which infected the codices seen by Surius and Henschen, nor is he to be taken for Racho, bishop of the Aedui. or collated with others or published, another thereafter came forth, namely that Ragnacarius, himself taken for Racho, bishop of the Aedui, was inscribed by some writers in the sacred tables of that church. For since St. Racho, as appears from his Acts, drawn from the Fouquet Library and composed by an anonymous author under the episcopate of Gerald I, who, as the authors of the new Gallia Christiana write, tome 4, col. 374 and following, bore the crozier towards the end of the 10th century, and which are kept in the Bollandian stock to be published at the 5th day of December, St. Racho, having professed the monastic life among the Aedui at the beginning of the 7th century and afterwards taken up as bishop, lived, as appears, in the time of Ragnacarius, it could easily happen that, on account of some

likeness of name and the kind of life which they had embraced in different monasteries, they should be taken for one and the same bishop. But, as the writers of the new Gallia Christiana just praised observe, Racho is inscribed in all the Catalogues of the bishops of the Aedui, while the name of Ragnacarius is read inserted in none at all. But these things remain to be unravelled at the 5th day of December.

[73] Few, then, the prelates who sat at Rauracum or Basel: We find four bishops of the church of Basel or of the Rauraci set over it in the course of three hundred years. First of all Justinian, whom the Acts of the synod of Cologne mention: the second place, if only the sepulchral title, of which above, num. 16 and following, found, as they will have it, in one of the sarcophagi dug up at Cologne, gives it sufficiently proved that a bishop named Pantalus ever sat at Basel or Rauracum, which, as I observe, is now denied by almost all the learned, is held by Pantalus, slain for Christ in the year 451, whose episcopate and martyrdom nevertheless contain nothing discordant either with historical facts or with what Schoepflin has about the state of Augusta Rauracorum or of the city of Basel: the third Adelphius, to whom the see of the Rauraci seems to be granted by stronger weights of reasons than the chair of Poitiers. The fourth finally, whom Jonas, a contemporary writer of the 7th century, brought into the number of the bishops of Augusta and of Basel, as becomes clear from the codices of better note, Ragnacarius. Hence anyone will easily argue how small is the number of the bishops of the Rauraci through three centuries, and how great were the disasters of Upper Alsace.

[74] [hence it is no wonder that the bishops of Strasbourg took care of the Christian cause in Upper Alsace.] It is no wonder, then, that in the 7th century and the following the prelate of Strasbourg exercised special jurisdiction through that part of Upper Alsace which now belongs to the Bishop of Basel. For truly, since either no bishops or very few were set over the church of Basel, the care of promoting the Christian cause among the Upper Alsatians fell upon the prelate of Strasbourg, who was in the neighbourhood: and hence the bishops of Strasbourg endowed with various estates some monasteries in Upper Alsace, but now situated in the diocese of Basel, and confirmed in the 8th century also the things granted to them, whether the part of that diocese in which those monasteries were erected formerly obeyed the bishop of the Rauraci or of Basel, or was united to their see only in the ninth century. Here I shall put an end to my disputation instituted about the beginnings of the church of the Rauraci or of Basel and some of its first bishops. For when we have reached the times of Walaus or Walanus, the series of these prelates is now asserted. Having measured out the more difficult years of the history of this church, and those more strewn with darkness, I shall leave the rest to be gone through by true students of history.