Speria

ON ST. SPERIA, OR EXUPERIA, VIRGIN, VENERATED AS A MARTYR, AT SAINT-CÉRÉ IN QUERCY,

ABOUT THE YEAR 760, AS IS REPORTED.

SYLLOGE.

From Castellanus and manuscript Notices.

Speria or Exuperia, virgin, venerated as a martyr at Saint-Céré in Quercy. (S.)

BY C. B.

In that part of the viscounty of Turenne or Torinum which the tract of Cahors in Gallia Aquitanica comprises, on the little river Baba, The situation of the town of Saint-Céré, which has St. Speria as patroness. in French, as it is called by Gérard, to be praised below, in the manuscript Notices extant with us, and by Blaeu in the Geographical Map of Quercy, la Bave, at the place where it forms a small island about two leagues from its junction with the Sera, in French, as it is called in the Notices and Geographical Map just cited, la Sere, and with the Duranius, in French la Dordoigne, at their confluence near Gintrac, there is situated, about nine leagues from Cahors towards the summer East, the town of St. Serenus, in French called S. Seré or Ceré. This town, which is only one league distant towards the South from the nunnery of the diocese of Cahors distinguished by the appellation of the Grace or Light of God, or also of the Hermitage, in the vernacular tongue of Quercy Leime, venerates as its patroness St. Exuperia or Speria, virgin, whom we give here, called in French S. Spere or Sperie.

[2] Castellanus announces her today in his Universal Martyrology That Saint who is announced there by Castellanus on this day, in these following words, turned by me from the French language into Latin: At Saint-Céré in Quercy, St. Exuperia, virgin, honoured there as a martyr in the church of her name, patroness of the viscounty of Turenne. Nor is there reason why this should wrongly

be suspected to have been done by him; for although, as I have discovered after a diligent search, among all the other hagiologies, both the more ancient and the more recent, not a single one is found which makes mention, either on this or on any other day, of St. Exuperia or Speria, venerated in the town of Saint-Céré, it is nevertheless certain that she is venerated there every year on the 12th day of October with solemn rite, as you will understand from what is now to be said. Manuscript Notices concerning St. Exuperia or Speria, sent in the year 1664 to our Henschen from Sarlat — which city is only about twelve leagues distant from the town of St. Serenus, or, to express this place in a single word, Serenopolis — by Armand Gérard, canon of the church of Sarlat, are extant with us; and these, which comprise a certain Life of St. Exuperia written in Latin and not very prolix, and various annotations on it composed in French by the praised canon of Sarlat, clearly reveal that St. Exuperia is venerated today in the town of St. Serenus, which Castellanus calls above Saint-Céré, both by the title which they display prefixed to that Life and in an annotation subjoined to it by Gérard.

[3] and then truly, as is proved, in that place, and indeed, I transcribe here the words in which this is done in both places. Those of the title are these: Life of St. Speria, virgin and martyr, taken from the hymns, prose, responsories, Lessons, Mass and whole Office of the church of the town of St. Serenus in the territory of Cahors, whose feast (namely in the same town of St. Serenus, as is plain from the context) is celebrated on the 12th day of October; and those of the Annotation, which I turn from French into Latin, these: St. Speria was very little known (namely to the martyrologists and other writers, by scarcely any of whom she is recorded) up to the present day, although she is the patroness of the town of St. Serenus and of its parish church, where the feast is kept on the 12th day of October with great solemnity and an Octave. Now, since the canon of Sarlat learned both what he relates in these words about the cult of St. Exuperia or Speria at Saint-Céré and some other things concerning her which he relates elsewhere from the very inhabitants of the town of St. Serenus, as he reveals, those more skilled in matters bearing on this; and since, although the Life of St. Exuperia which bears the title just transcribed here is, from what is to be said below, of very slight credit, it does not seem that it can be called into doubt that what is related in it about the Saint's cult on the 12th day of October was drawn either from a similar or at any rate not worse source; everyone will surely acknowledge from what has been alleged that it is certain that St. Exuperia is venerated in the town of St. Serenus every year on the 12th day of October with solemn rite. And you would rightly conclude from the words of Gérard just given not only that the Saint is certainly venerated at Serenopolis every year on the 12th day of October, but also, since she is the patroness, as is affirmed in these words, of the parish church of the town of St. Serenus, in which she is venerated there, that Castellanus, when, announcing St. Exuperia or Speria at Saint-Céré in the words transcribed here above, he says that she is venerated there in the church of her name, spoke by this of no other than that parish church of the town of St. Serenus. But is the Saint not venerated elsewhere also than at Serenopolis in the said parish church of her name?

[4] other places also perhaps celebrating her, She is also called by Castellanus, in the announcement transcribed here above, Patroness of the viscounty of Turenne; and Gérard, after the words recited just now, affirms in the Notices composed by him, already praised more than once, that she is also marked on the 12th day of October in the old Breviary according to the use of the church of Cahors and likewise in the Proper of the Saints of the same church; and hence it will perhaps seem to someone that Exuperia is venerated on the 12th day of October not only in the parish church of the town of St. Serenus but also in other churches of the viscounty of Turenne and of the diocese of Cahors; but neither in the manuscript Notices of Gérard extant with us, as I have noted, is the Saint anywhere called Patroness of the viscounty of Turenne, nor does Exsuperia or Speria appear in the manuscript Elenchus, extant with us, of the Saints who have place in the Proper of the church of Cahors; wherefore, since the Saint was perhaps named by Castellanus Patroness of the viscounty of Turenne because she is the patroness not of the whole viscounty of Turenne but of a part situated in it, or of the town of St. Serenus which we have often mentioned, and since she was perhaps marked on that day in the old Breviary and the Proper of the Saints of the church of Cahors for no other cause than that she is venerated, as has been said, on the 12th day of October in the town of St. Serenus of the diocese of Cahors, I would not dare to assert here for certain — although meanwhile the matter does not lack every appearance of truth — that there exist, besides the parish church of the town of St. Serenus, called after St. Exsuperia or Speria from what has been said, other churches either in the viscounty of Turenne or in the diocese of Cahors in which our Saint enjoys or ever enjoyed ecclesiastical cult on this or any other day.

[5] But it does not matter much; for that the Saint is venerated at least at Serenopolis, or in the town of St. Serenus, in the church of her name on the 12th day of October, she is venerated as a Martyr, has been most clearly placed beyond all controversy by what has already been alleged above, which suffices for our purpose here, and is therefore altogether certain. Nor do I think it is to be doubted that the Saint is also venerated as a martyr at Serenopolis in the church of her name, as is asserted by Castellanus in the announcement transcribed here above. Gérard indeed, when he affirms in the manuscript Notices which, as I have already noted, he communicated to our Henschen, that Speria is marked in the Proper of the Saints of the church of Cahors on the 12th day of October, adds that this is done there in such a way that the appellation of Martyr is abstained from: but he attributes this very appellation to the Saint in the very place in which he does so, as does also the title, transcribed here above, of the not prolix Life which those Notices, as has been said, comprise. Nor does this Life itself in any way stand in the way of Exuperia's being believed to be venerated as a Martyr at Saint-Céré or Serenopolis. For it relates that she was taken from the living by a violent death for the preservation of chastity, and thus makes her a martyr; and since this is so, this very thing was most probably, not to say undoubtedly, related in the ecclesiastical Office formerly customarily recited of the Saint at Saint-Céré, from which that little work was taken, as the title which it bears, transcribed here above, attests; and since therefore it seems that it cannot be doubted that through this St. Exuperia was formerly venerated as a Martyr in the town of St. Serenus, I judge that it is to be believed that she is likewise venerated there today as a Martyr, not indeed by the ecclesiastical Office just mentioned, which from what is to be said has perished, but in some other manner.

[6] Nor indeed is she venerated as a Martyr without reason. For in actual fact, [and in actual fact martyrdom, as recorded here, which, although it is of slight credit,] as it appears, she underwent martyrdom, as I shall presently teach, as soon as I have brought forward some things about her not very prolix Life, which I have already mentioned more than once. That it was written in the very seventeenth century in which Gérard flourished, and was communicated to him by the very author by whom it was composed, when (whence you may perhaps not without reason conceive suspicion of fraud) the ecclesiastical Office from which it had been taken had already perished, the canon of Sarlat affirms in the Notices which he sent to our Henschen; and since sure credit is to be given to him in this matter, truly that little work draws to itself great authority neither from the author by whom, nor from the age in which, it was committed to writing. Nor does it do so considered in itself. For nearly the whole of it, unless I am most vehemently mistaken, is fictitious, nor do I think it will easily come about that it be held as true history by anyone who is even in some fashion skilled in criticism. To me certainly it appears plainly unworthy to be reckoned among the sincere and genuine Acts of good note, and on that ground to obtain a place in our Work. Yet, since, from what has been said, it is not very prolix, and we are accustomed to weave into the Sylloges which we not seldom prepare concerning Saints of the Greek church the elogia with which they are adorned by the Greeks, even though sometimes defiled with fables, provided they are not too prolix, it seemed good likewise to weave into this our Sylloge on St. Exuperia that not very prolix Life of hers, however disfigured with fictions it may appear: first indeed, so that the studious reader, the little work being thus placed before his eyes, may himself pass his own judgment on it and consider whether in actual fact it is nearly wholly, as I have said, fictitious; and then, so that, since the ecclesiastical Office from which the said Life was drawn is now lost, as I have already noted from Gérard, everyone may without difficulty understand from it, at least in some fashion, what was handed down to memory in that Office, which will perhaps not be unwelcome to someone.

[7] to this our Sylloge on the Saint, however It is expressed in these following words: Serenus, powerful in Upper Aquitaine in that richer soil of it which is contained within the circuit of the Auvergne mountains, of the rivers Dordogne and Silerus, of Tulle, Bribata (in French Brive la Gaillarde) and Sarlat, a lord, took to wife Blandinia, of equal nobility and piety. Of them were born Clarus, and soon Speria, in the castle of St. Serenus, the best-known town of the most noble viscounty of Turenne. Clarus, after giving his attention to letters, learned through chosen masters skill in the military art, by breaking horses, by the play of the lance, and by the other exercises of mimic warfare which became the heir of so great a name. The parents marvelled at the soul of Speria in her earliest little age as a pledge fallen from heaven. In her eyes there shone a certain divine flame of the heavenly ones and sparks of faith; instead of playthings, frequent gazings on high, marks of rare piety and signs of future charity. Scarcely had she reached the years of puberty when, professing the rule of a stricter life and the worship of a severer religion, not in silks and precious linen, but in haircloth and ashes, she implored the mercy of God with continual tears. At length Serenus and Blandinia were taken from the living, leaving two heirs of a most ample house.

[8] to the Sylloge on the Saint Meanwhile Ælidius, lord of that most noble territory by right of partition with Clarus and Speria, the treaty being violated and the bonds of kinship broken, was harrying the peoples of Clarus with open war; Clarus on the other hand was defending with arms the lordship left to him by his parents by hereditary right; thence robberies, slaughters and everywhere massacres of the citizens; but there was a cessation from so many evils, Speria, with whom Ælidius was desperately in love for the wonderful comeliness of her form, being pledged to him by betrothal tablets: but the preparation of the bridal bed was already being awaited, when the virgin, abhorring wedlock and wounded with the love of the heavenly Spouse, to whom she had vowed her virginity, withdrawing secretly from home in the dead of night, goes straight into the vast solitude of the Wilderness, in the midst of which an aged and hollow oak spread out with wide-spreading branches, beside which

a most clear spring, whose rivulet, bursting forth, the same earth that had produced it drank up. It seemed to the Virgin that a dwelling had been offered her in this tree by those above []; soon she hid herself secretly in its hollow, gaping and empty from age, which afforded both a temple and a lodging, one of her household women being privy to it, who was to visit her secretly at fixed times to bring her food, lest she should fail; and there, love being the bridesmaid, she led a heavenly life with the heavenly Spouse. Nor were arts of harming lacking to the demon, who, bearing the appearance and dress of a young virgin, approaching Speria coaxingly, urges that, leaving with her the vast solitude which had long held them afflicted, they should go together to the ancestral home, there to obtain rich fortune, distinguished marriages and sweet children without loss of salvation: then the Virgin, armed with the sign of the Cross, put the plotting enemy to flight.*

[9] The matters settled between Clarus and Ælidius did not stand, woven in entire and the fire of war, which had before been extinguished, the hatreds of Elidius gradually reviving, blazed up more dangerously, because Speria would not yield herself to him as wife as a condition of peace. But, that the innocent blood of the citizens might be spared, the war being cut short, Clarus is challenged by Ælidius through a herald to single combat. The opportunity of fighting being accepted and a place assigned for the combat, Clarus was present in arms, but it pleased them first to search again for the Virgin, who, though often sought and nowhere found, was perhaps lurking, desirous of the solitary life, in some vast cave of the wilderness. The grove is at once surrounded with an extensive search, and if any part is denser with thickets or rougher with rocks or deeper in valleys, it is surveyed more keenly. When behold, not one of the race of the Hamadryads, but Speria alive in the hollow belly of an oak. They run to the spectacle and the crowd of searchers gathers round the Virgin. Then Clarus, thrown into the dear embraces of his Sister, after tears urges her, leaving the solitude and the decayed habitation, a wild beast's rather than a most illustrious Virgin's, soon [] to be dishonoured by the lust of a wandering herdsman or torn to pieces by ravening wolves, to return to her splendid house, to refresh with food her limbs emptied by fasts and withered by the stench of the place, and not to refuse to enter into marriage with Ælidius, which would bring peace to the common peoples.*

[10] To whom the Virgin briefly: that she despised death in this hiding-place is displayed here to the reader, in order to escape death; that she who felt no hunger in God did not need food; and that, joined to the heavenly Spouse, she spurned marriage with Ælidius []. Ælidius, with tears, promises, entreaties [], at length brings to bear the engines of threats, when the Virgin, holding fast to her sacred purpose, turns away the impious despoiler of her virginity, dedicated to Christ. He, made more ferocious by the injury of the repulse, stung by the gadfly of love and hatred together, would have shed the virginal blood with drawn sword, but the steel grew numb, harmless, about her neck; Ælidius was terrified at his powerless hand, and marvels at his conquered right hand, the sword slipping from it; but the Virgin, granting pardon to the striker, of her own accord offers her neck to be cut off. The Virgin is seen alive after death; the trunk does not roll in its own blood, but by a stupendous miracle seized the head in both arms, and, laden with the precious burden, carried it to the mouth of the stream (which from the barbarity of the striker is called to this day Barbares) where it mingles with the little river Baba; and there first a church was consecrated by the inhabitants to the name of the Virgin and to her sacred remains, and a celebrated town was built under the patronage of Speria Serena, afterwards called by the name of her father Serenus, while Clarus and Ælidius, roused by the novelty of the portent and the enormity of the deed, covered with the boughs of trees and nowhere safe, rave through the whole wilderness.

[11] [her Life, with the author cited here, who marks it about the year 760, reports that she underwent] Such is the little work which its title, transcribed here above, calls the Life of our Saint, and which I judged was to be transcribed here entire. Let the studious reader now weigh it with attentive mind, and I do not doubt that he will judge it plainly fictitious, such as I have already said. But however fabulous and destitute of the appearance of truth it may seem, it nevertheless appears that it must be believed that the Saint truly died by martyrdom, as it records. For since this very thing was also, as I have already taught above, handed down to memory in the ecclesiastical Office from which the Life was taken, the inhabitants of the town of St. Serenus had most probably believed long since, when that Office had been composed for the use of their church, that the Saint departed from life by martyrdom; wherefore, since an ancient tradition reporting it seems to have flourished among them, there truly seems to be reason why, on account of it, since traditions of this kind, so long as they contain nothing absurd or altogether unlike the truth, are not easily to be rejected, it should be judged that it must be believed that Exsuperia flew to the Heavenly Ones by martyrdom. But when was this done? Gérard, in words rendered by me into Latin from French, writes thus in the Notices already so often praised, which we possess by his kindness: In the Chronological Table of the bishops of Cahors composed by M. Vidal, in the column of men illustrious for holiness, St. Speria, V. M., of Cahors, is related to have suffered martyrdom in the wilderness (namely in the place near which the monastery of sacred Virgins praised at number 1 is now seen) about the year 760, and to be preserved in the town of St. Serenus; and in the column of persecutions Ælidius, tyrant of Cahors, is asserted to have cut off the head of St. Speria in the year 760. That the M. Vidal who is praised here was more recent, nay only contemporary with Gérard, is revealed not obscurely by what Gérard himself presently subjoins to the words just transcribed here.

[12] [and the conjecture, partly from the relics of the Saint, which, when he flourished, at Serenopolis no longer] But although this is so, I nevertheless wrote above in the margin the epoch which is assigned through these words to the martyrdom of our Saint, indicating, according to our custom, from the very beginning the time at which she underwent it, yet with the manner of speaking as is reported added, in order to show that my mind is doubtful of the matter, both because I cannot prove it foreign to the truth or drawn from a muddy source, and because Castellanus embraced the same, writing in the margin of today's announcement of St. Exuperia about the year 760. Meanwhile it is asserted by the same author who marks her martyrdom either in the year 760 or about it, as he testifies here through the words just now recited, that the body of our Saint was still preserved in the town of St. Serenus in Gérard's age; and Gérard, well informed by the very inhabitants of that town what the facts are, affirms that this is certainly foreign to the truth, which surely in some measure diminishes his credit and authority; and since, as he adds, that sacred pledge, after it had long been preserved at Serenopolis or in the town of St. Serenus, had in his age already long before been translated from there to some unknown place of the Limousin or territory of Limoges, hence together, and chiefly from the fact that the Saint is indicated near the end of the Life transcribed here above to have been called not only Speria or Exuperia but also Serena, he conjecturally opines that she is not different or distinct from St. Serena, whose body, together with that of St. Gemma, is asserted, in Labbe, Bibliotheca Nova Manuscriptorum, volume 2, page 287, in the Chronicles of Geoffrey, Prior of Vigeois, to rest at Stirps, or in the abbey of Stirps of the Order of St. Augustine, which is situated in the diocese of Limoges and is called in the vernacular tongue of the Limousin l'Esterp or l'Eter.

[13] Nor does anything occur on account of which a conjecture of this kind greatly displeases me; [were, sought, and likewise other things proposed here about the town of Saint-Céré,] but whether it is true or false matters little to know, since the church of the said abbey, together with the sacred relics of SS. Serena, Gemma and Gauterius, founder of the same abbey, which were preserved in it, was burnt in the sixteenth century, as I understand from what Gérard adds to the things already alleged above by me, by the Calvinists, who were then turning all sacred things upside down in France. Adding, therefore, nothing more about the conjecture formed by Gérard, as has been said, chiefly from the fact that the Saint perhaps had two names, or obtained not only the name of Speria but also, if her Life is to be believed, the name of Serena, I now propose to the reader here another, likewise formed or drawn chiefly from that. Gérard, having premised in his Annotation, in which he chiefly treats of this in the Notices already very often praised, that in the viscounty of Turenne and the tract of Cahors, on the little river Baba, at the place where it forms, as I have taught above, a small island, there are situated a castle, depending on that viscounty, and a town, presently adds that in the old Acts the castle is indeed named from St. Serenus, but the town from St. Speria; and since St. Serenus, presbyter and confessor, already brought into our Work at the second day of October, on which he stands inscribed in the sacred Fasti, is venerated not in the viscounty of Turenne or the tract of Cahors but far from there in Champagne in France, and Serenus, who is related in the Life transcribed here above to have been the father of the Saint, is nowhere held as a Saint, I do not believe that what is now called the town of St. Serenus ever drew its appellation either from the latter, as is related near the end of the Life of our Saint, or from the former; but I most vehemently suspect, nay, as far as conjecture allows, I think, that, after it had first been marked with the name of St. Speria (for by this it is named in the old Acts, on Gérard's testimony, as I have just taught), it was afterwards, this former nomenclature having become obsolete, called the town of St. Serena, from the second of the two names, Speria and Serena, by which our Saint is called near the end of her Life transcribed here above; and that in the lapse of time it came about that it was called, and further is still called today, not the town of St. Serena but, the feminine termination of this name being changed by error into the masculine, the town of St. Serenus.

[14] does not seem to be despised. And indeed there is reason why both this conjecture and the other, adduced just now from Gérard, should seem by no means to be despised; and hence it comes about that I do not know whether it would not be better that what is now called the town of St. Serenus should be named not by this, but by the other name of Serenopolis by which it has already been called by me above, since thus, whether my conjecture proposed here now be true or false, it can be so called. Moreover, since, as Gérard teaches in the Notices already very often recorded, the town of St. Serenus or Serenopolis is situated a little below the place where the rivulet or torrent called Barbares mingles with the Baba, I think it no less to be doubted whether it is rightly said there that the town of St. Serenus was founded at that place to which the Saint, already slain, carried, if the things narrated near the end of her Life already given are true, her head cut off from her, by a miracle plainly stupendous but also attributed by fable-mongers to many other martyrs, than whether it did not come about from the very name Barbares, by which that torrent may have been called even before the martyrdom of St. Speria, that, the name

of the barbarous cruelty with which the Saint had been savaged was invented as having been given to it on that account. Nor would I dare to assert that it did not arise from a similar licence of fabrication that likewise, since it was known either from tradition or from elsewhere that the Saint had been slain for the preservation of her chastity by Ælidius, tyrant of Cahors, the marriage with her desired by him, and nearly everything which is said in the Life of our Saint to have arisen from it, were invented.

[] Supply to see* (cernere).

[] Add otherwise* (alioquin).

[] Read joined* (copulatam).

[] Add spent in vain* (frustra impensis).