Angadrisma

ON ST. ANGADRISMA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS,

AT BEAUVAIS IN GALLIA BELGICA.

ABOUT THE YEAR 695.

SYLLOGE CONCERNING HER DEEDS AND CULT.

Angadrisma, virgin, abbess of Oratorium, in the diocese of Beauvais. (S.)

BY C. G.

§ I. The memory of the saint in the sacred calendars, her illustrious birth, her abbacy, certain miracles, whether she is to be distinguished from Angarisma, the time of her death.

Belloacum or Bellovacum (commonly Beauvais), an ancient city of Gallia Belgica, among its chief patrons, The saint, mentioned in the sacred calendars on this day two of whom have already obtained a place in our work, namely St. Ebrulf at the 25th day of July and St. Geremar at the 24th of September, venerates on this day St. Angadrisma, whose memory indeed is not found in the more ancient and classic martyrologies; for the Martyrology of Usuard, in which l'Oisel in his Monuments of Beauvais testifies that this eulogy of her is had: On the day before the Ides of October, in the territory of Beauvais, of St. Andragisina, virgin, must have been augmented for the use of the church of Beauvais, since this does not exist in the genuine text of the Usuardine Martyrology: but she is inserted here and there in the more recent sacred calendars, though on different days: Molanus first of all, in the Additions to Usuard, announces her thus at the 14th of October: In the territory of Beauvais, of St. Angadrisina, virgin; the Martyrology of the church of St. Gudula at Brussels: In the city of Beauvais, of St. Angadrisina, virgin, betrothed of St. Ansbert, archbishop of Rouen. The codex of the Queen of Sweden under no. 428: Beauvais, of St. Andragisina, virgin. Our manuscript Florarium likewise: of Adrogisina, virgin. In these her name Angadrisma, as she is now commonly called, is not perfectly expressed, but since they assign Beauvais as the place of the cult, there can be no doubt that our St. Angadrisma is designated: on the same day her memory is celebrated by the German Martyrology, Aubert Le Mire, the same Molanus in the Natales Sanctorum Belgii, and Castellanus in the Universal Martyrology; while Saussay, in his manner, adorns her with a longer eulogy from her Acts, which may be seen in him.

[2] and mentioned at the 27th of March, But in the Benedictine calendars she is announced on the 27th day of March, as in Dorganius, Ménard and Wion, who rightly add and abbess to the cited eulogies: what the reason for this transposition is I do not know, unless perhaps, as Le Cointe asserts at the year of Christ 683, citing, however, no author, it is the day of the translation, of which more will have to be treated in the following §. Her memory is also celebrated in other authors: for there have written of her St. Antoninus, part II of the Chronicle, title XIII, chapter VI, § XX; Vincent of Beauvais, book XXIII, chapter XCIX; Peter de Natalibus, book III, chapter CVIII, whose errors, as he wanders in many things here, Henschenius corrected in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Ansbert in our work at the 9th of February; Anthony Yepes in the Benedictine Chronicles; Malbrancq in the Antiquities of the Morini; and Peter Louvet in the Antiquities of Beauvais; who all took their material almost entirely from the Life of St. Ansbert written by Aigradus, a monk of Fontenelle, contemporary with that saint and so also with our saint, whence also was drawn the first and greatest part of the Life of St. Angadrisma, which I found among our collections, copied from a very old codex of the illustrious Claude Joly, canon of Paris, to which an anonymous author has sewn a certain rather inept fringe, containing very few particular deeds of hers; this Life, therefore, following the example of Mabillon, who also judged it unworthy of the light, I shall not edit, but from the praised Life of St. Ansbert, to chapter I of which, edited in our work at the 9th day of February, I refer the reader desiring to see the Acts of our saint in their first source, I shall set out her deeds here, and add those things which I have found out from other authors, intending after these to show her legitimate cult.

[3] and nobly born in the territory of Thérouanne, Mabillon, in the Notes to the Life of St. Aigulf, abbot of Lérins, writes that our saint was of Tarvenna by origin, or, as I think it must be explained, born in the territory of Thérouanne, so called from the once noble city of Teruana on the river Lys among the Morini, of which, destroyed by the emperor Charles V, only ruins now remain; which also becomes very probable from the Life of St. Ansbert, in which the monk Aigradus seems to designate the saint's native land in these words: The father also of this holy virgin, the illustrious Robert, and his brother Altbert, were maternal uncles of the holy father Lantbert, successor in the order of government of Blessed Wandregisil, drawing their origin from the territory of Thérouanne: as is established from the words recited, she had as her father Robert or Rotbert, conspicuous for remarkable nobility, and under Chlothar III, who held the helm of the kingdom among the Franks from the year 656 until the year 669, bearer of the royal ring, or, as La Noue and Feron in their work on the Chancellors of France would have it, chancellor of the same king: Malbrancq, in book III on the Morini, has tried to derive the lineage of this Robert from the ancient counts of Boulogne, Thérouanne and Tournehem, and asserts that he was count of Rentica (in French Renty), a little town situated two leagues from the ruins of Thérouanne, not so much from certain and proved monuments as from doubtful conjectures.

[4] the betrothal contracted with St. Ansbert having been miraculously dissolved, The year in which she was brought into the light is unknown, since the extreme old age in which she died is unknown; but it is established that, having been religiously brought up, when she had reached a marriageable age she was betrothed by her parents to Ansbert, a likewise most noble youth: but she, desiring with her whole heart to keep her virginity unblemished, prayed God that He would take away from her the beauty of body and face, as she thought a sure safeguard for protecting chastity; and at once she felt her face covered with a foul leprosy, curable by no art of physicians; but as soon as (her betrothed, who was held by an equal zeal for virginity, and her father-in-law and father consenting), being about to lead thenceforth the life of a nun, she received the sacred veil from St. Audoenus, archbishop of Rouen, she recovered the brightness and dignity of her former beauty. This wonderful history of beauty lost and recovered, after Baillet, who nibbled at it a little with his usual hypercriticism, a certain modern French author in his French Legend seemed at length, if not to deny, at least to disguise, in this manner: Angadrisma fell into a dangerous illness, from which, after she had recovered her health, a great deformity remained to her: but although I confess that miracles related by any authors whatsoever in the Lives of the Saints are not to be believed indiscriminately, yet since Aigradus, praised by all, as also by Baillet himself in his Critical Table, as a weighty and contemporary author, expressly narrates this in the praised Life of St. Ansbert, which it cannot be shown is here interpolated, since very many more wonderful things frequently occurring in many Acts of other saints are called into doubt by no one, I prefer with the authors enumerated above who write of our saint to look up to this wonderful prodigy as true, and to acknowledge God wonderful in His saints, rather than to deny faith without any reason to the praised biographer of St. Ansbert.

[5] veiled by St. Audoenus, she was made abbess The episcopate of St. Audoenus was too long, inasmuch as, according to the now received opinion of Le Cointe, it extended from the year 640 until the year 683, for the time at which the holy virgin was veiled to be defined in any way from it; yet that time can not improbably be conjectured from this: after she had been consecrated to God, the man of the Lord (as Aigradus says) Ansbert, brought by his father into the king's court, though unwilling, being distinguished as he was by keenness of intellect, began to be a learned court scribe, and composer of royal privileges, and bearer of the royal ring, and afterwards, having left the court, lived as a monk for some years at least under the rule of St. Wandregisil in the monastery of Fontenelle: easily, therefore, seven or even more years flowed between the death of St. Wandregisil, which Boschius tied to the year 667 in the Preliminary Commentary to his Life, and the consecration of the holy virgin, so that accordingly this ought to be placed not later than the year 660. Then she was set over a monastery of virgins which, distant about two leagues from Beauvais, and situated in that place where there is now a village of the same name in the deanery of Mouchy, as Louvet relates, was commonly called Oratorium, Oroër or Orouer; and as she surpassed the rest in dignity, so she excelled them in zeal for humility, modest in clothing and the rest of the care of the body, given to continual abstinence and prayer, accustomed to venerate with special devotion the holy martyrs Lucian, Maximian and Julian (of these it has been treated in our work at the 8th of January), whose sepulchre she often visited; there shone in her a certain outstanding brightness of chastity, patience, obedience, and piety towards the needy, very many of whom she sustained with large alms.

[6] of the monastery of Oratorium, founded by St. Ebrulf, But whether, as soon as she had received the sacred veil from St. Audoenus, she betook herself into the said monastery, or whether she laid the foundations of the religious life elsewhere and was at length called to rule the family of Oratorium, is uncertain; if, however, credence holds for the miracle which I shall relate from Louvet in the following number, it is more probable that she led a private life for some time under the habit of a nun. For the rest, that that sacred house of virgins took its name and origin from the oratory which St. Ebrulf had built for himself in that place, and to which afterwards many sacred buildings were added, the biographer of the same saint relates in these words: Having built for himself (St. Ebrulf) *an oratory in that

place, which was afterwards designated by posterity with the appellation of Oratorium, because it had many houses of prayer, he served the Lord there without intermission; and then, having narrated the burial of the same saint in his said Oratorium, he adds this: Thence, some years having passed, a certain noble and religious matron named Theclana adorned his sepulchre with a more eminent structure; also an illustrious and wise man, Theodebert, bishop of Paris… built there a temple to the Lord, where other buildings dedicated to the names of various saints were also constructed, whence the same place, as we said above, obtained the name of Oratorium; finally, the blessed Angadrisima (Angadrisma), virgin and abbess, lived there with holy virgins and religious widows in holy conversation, and consummated the happy purpose of her life.*

[7] and she shone with miracles while still living. Louvet adds that, after the most holy course of her life had been completed, she was illustrated by God with very many miracles and was entered in the roll of the holy virgins; yet he states no miracle singly except these two by which God illustrated her sanctity while she was among the living: the one as received by the tradition of the elders and engraved on her reliquary: namely, that before she was set over the monastery she had voluntarily offered her help in lighting the candles and lamps of the church of a certain abbey, in which she assisted daily at the divine offices, and for this purpose was wont to ask for fire from a baker dwelling in the place which is now called "of Drogo the child," in the vernacular de Druon l'enfant; who, indignant at being so unseasonably interrupted by her every day, threw burning coals into her lap, which she carried into the church with body and clothing unharmed; when the baker learned what had happened, he ran of his own accord to the virgin and, falling prostrate on the ground, suppliantly begged pardon: the other drawn from the praised Life of St. Ebrulf, which Le Cointe, in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks, together with the origin of the monastery of Oratorium related in the preceding number, relegates among fables, deceived by the error by which he had persuaded himself that St. Ebrulf was a whole century younger and lived at the beginning of the eighth century, and so after the age of our saint, from a certain charter of Chilperic, by which this king, moved by the prayers of Dodo, bishop of Beauvais, and of Abbot Ebrulf, decreed that the monastery of St. Lucian should be restored, and which he wrongly attributed to Chilperic III, whereas Cuper proved, from the charter itself, in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of the same St. Ebrulf, that it is to be attributed to Chilperic I, if indeed it is genuine. And the miracle is of this kind: namely, at the time when she was presiding as abbess over her monastery, a fire had seized the basilica of St. Mary, built by Chrodobert or Theodebert, bishop of Paris, in the time of Queen St. Bathildis, and destruction seemed to threaten the other sacred buildings there; and when human art and industry availed nothing against the flame spreading widely, St. Angadrisma went to the tomb of St. Ebrulf, and reverently carried out his sacred bones, enclosed in it, against the flames, which immediately began to diminish and at length to be entirely extinguished; and these being extinguished, the holy virgin laid up the sacred pledges again in their tomb, wrapped in clean linens and silken cloth. These, and no more, deeds of the holy virgin have become known to me.

[8] It is a celebrated question whether our St. Angadrisma is the same It is asked whether she is to be distinguished from Angarisma? as Angarisma, and accordingly whether, with the abbot of Lérins, whether he was then Rigomirus or Prigonius, she caused the body of St. Aigulf to be carried from the island of Capraia to Lérins a few days after his martyrdom, which he underwent in the said island about the year 681, and translated his head and right arm to her own monastery, as Adrevald narrates in the Life of the same St. Aigulf: Stilting resolved this in the Preliminary Commentary to the same Life, and reckoned this whole narration of Adrevald among fables for solid reasons, which could be seen there; since, however, this question belongs especially here, I will repeat it in compendium, as it was resolved by the praised Stilting at the place cited.

[9] Adrevald himself gave occasion to the question, writing this: [who, since she is known only from the fables of Adrevald in the Life of St. Aigulf] Moreover the messengers (who brought word of the martyrdom of St. Aigulf to Lérins) make a sharer in the news a certain abbess named Angarisma, who presided over sisters, nuns, in a neighbouring monastery, imbued by the holy man from her earliest age both in the Holy Scriptures and in monastic teachings; and a little after, calling the monastery over which Angarisma presided Oratorium. And at that time our St. Angadrisma presided as abbess over Oratorium; therefore from Adrevald's words Angarisma seems to have been the same as St. Angadrisma: but Adrevald, as Mabillon notes, gravely erred in writing that Oratorium was near Lérins, which was situated not in Provence, in which Lérins is, but in the territory of Beauvais, and so very far from Lérins; to whom, accordingly, the said monastery and also the very name of the abbess were little known: moreover, since nothing is had either about Angarisma or about the separation of the head and arm from the rest of the body of St. Aigulf, which, especially so few days after his agony, is altogether incredible, in the first Life of the same saint, which is both of better note and is thought to have been written before the age of Adrevald, who wrote two centuries after St. Aigulf and after the mentioned abbess, and is therefore destitute of great authority in these matters, I deservedly hold this whole narration about Angarisma suspect, and reckon it among the fables commonly familiar to Adrevald in writing the oft-said Life, as the praised Stilting has shown.

[10] Nor does another biographer of St. Aigulf, Vincent Barralis, deserve greater credence here, and from the conjectures of Vincent Barralis, is thought not to have existed. who for the most part followed Adrevald, and changed and augmented him at his own will: he noticed the error of Adrevald, who placed Oratorium in the island of Lérins, and, trying to correct it, substituted the monastery of Arluc for Oratorium, and, making Angarisma herself a native of Blois, distinguished her from St. Angadrisma, who was a native of Thérouanne and never presided over the monastery of Arluc; and in this correction Mabillon, after long hesitation, acquiesced in volume 1 of the Benedictine Annals, not having yet seen the praised first Life of St. Aigulf: but the again praised Stilting observed that Barralis had no foundation for correcting Adrevald's error other than fallacious conjectures, and therefore that Adrevald's error had been changed into another error of Vincent Barralis; let us hear his words here: This writer (Barralis) saw that there was no monastery in the island of Lérins which was called Oratorium; for this reason he substituted Arluc … he makes (Angarisma) a native of Blois, for no other reason, I think, than because she is said by Adrevald to have been imbued by St. Aigulf from her earliest age both in the Holy Scriptures and in monastic teachings; for from this Barralis seems easily to have concluded that she was born in the same city as Aigulf; since, therefore, Angarisma has become known only from the fables of Adrevald and the conjectures of Barralis, just as the deed related of her is incredible to me, so also I shall not suppose that she, if you would have her distinct from our St. Angadrisma, existed in the nature of things at that time, until this is shown from better monuments. Let these things, then, said on this controversy, suffice; I proceed to the year and place of the saint's death.

[11] the saint died, as is conjectured, It is agreed among authors that the saint passed to a better life in about the same year as her former betrothed St. Ansbert; except the Martyrology of Paris, which tied the death of St. Ansbert to the year 695, and that of St. Angadrisma to about the year 698, but for what reason I do not know: indeed the year of her death seems to be assigned only from this conjecture, that, since the saint was betrothed to St. Ansbert, it is easily gathered thence that they were equal in age, and accordingly probably died about the same time: therefore, since the year 695 was the year of St. Ansbert's death, as Henschenius has shown in the Preliminary Commentary to his Life, and other authors commonly relate, it may probably be determined that St. Angadrisma exchanged this life for a better about the same year.

[12] But Castellanus, in his Universal French Martyrology, noted the year 698 in the margin as the year of St. Ansbert's death, from the year of death of St. Ansbert, and then placed it that St. Angadrisma died about the same year: Mabillon had lighted his way, who in the Notes to the Life of St. Ansbert, which he gave in the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order, century 2, page 1049, and then on page 1063, where he gave a compendium of the Life of St. Angadrisma, also assigned the same year to both as the year of death, from a certain transcript of the Chronicle of Fontenelle, in which this is had: In the fourth year of Childebert, king of the Franks, which was the eighth of the dukedom of Pippin the elder duke, in the fifth year of Pope Sergius presiding in the apostolic see, in the tenth year of Justinian the Younger, Augustus, ruling, of glorious memory, the benign man Ansbert, bishop of the city of Rouen, sought the heavenly kingdoms; which is the year of the Lord's Incarnation 695, in the eighth indiction, on the fifth day before the Ides of February: of the chronological notes here heaped together, by no means, as he himself observed, consonant with one another, the praised Mabillon judged that only the fourth year of King Childebert, which falls in the year 698 of the Christian era (for he began to reign, as Pagi rightly showed in his Critica, in the year 695 before the 23rd day of March), was to be retained; but since that transcript was so unhappy in heaping together chronological notes, its genuineness may deservedly be doubted, especially since they are not found in many exemplars of the same Chronicle: for they are not had in the Chronicle of Fontenelle according to the codex, as is said, manuscript of Fontenelle, nor in the exemplar which d'Achéry edited, nor even in our manuscript from the codex of Rouge-Cloître collated with another of Tournai; in all which exemplars, on the contrary, it is read that the body of St. Ansbert was translated from the basilica of St. Paul, in which it had first been laid up, into the church of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, by St. Bainus in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 704 … which was the tenth of the glorious king Hildebert, etc., after it had rested nine years in the aforesaid basilica of St. Paul; in these the year 704 of the Christian era agrees with the year X of Childebert, and with many chronological notes marked in the same exemplars, as may be seen in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Wandregisil in our work at the 22nd of July, so that all have adopted this chronography; whence, neglecting the transcript which Mabillon brought forward, it is permissible to conclude that St. Ansbert departed from this life in the year 695.

[13] about the year 695 Mabillon also, who, in order to leave at least some time both to the abbatial office which St. Ansbert held at Fontenelle and to the episcopal office which he held at Rouen, was compelled in the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order to put off his decease as long as he could; since in the Observations prefixed to the Life of St. Hermeland he says that the same saint founded the monastery of Aindre at the petition of St. Pascharius, bishop of Nantes, sent by St. Lantbert, then still abbot of Fontenelle, and predecessor of St. Ansbert in that office,

directed to that work, had written that he completed it only in the year 696, not undeservedly corrected himself in volume I of the Benedictine Annals, where he tied both the beginning of the monastery of Aindre to the year 675 and the death of St. Ansbert to 795, and proves invincibly that the same saint ceased to live in that year from a charter of privilege granted to a certain unknown monastery called St. Mary's, which was signed on the 6th day of March in the second year of Childebert, the most glorious king: and to this privilege, among others, Gripho subscribed, without expression indeed of his episcopal see, yet the learned no longer doubt that he was bishop of Rouen, and so already in the year II of King Childebert, or of Christ 696, he held the see of Rouen, which St. Ansbert had left widowed: Le Cointe indeed protests, and strives to prove from the corrupt Acts of St. Wulfram that Reginald was the immediate successor of St. Ansbert, but he seems not to have had before his eyes the instrument brought forward by Mabillon, nor are his reasons so great that they ought to delay the reader much.

[14] in her monastery of Oratorium. The place in which our saint breathed forth her happy soul Louvet designates in book III, chapter VI of the Antiquities of Beauvais, where he writes this: At length this virgin passed from this life into heaven … after completing the course of her life in all piety and holiness in her abbey of Oratorium; and that, as I think, from the praised Life of St. Ebrulf, in which its anonymous author indicates in almost the same words that Oratorium was the place of the saint's death: Finally (he says) the blessed Angadrisima, virgin and abbess, lived there (in the monastery of Oratorium) with holy virgins and religious widows in holy conversation, and consummated the happy purpose of her life; and since that is altogether likely on every side, I would establish it with more words in vain; the praised Louvet adds that her body rested in the oft-said monastery until the times of the Norman irruptions into Gaul. And that during the time when it rested in the monastery of Oratorium the holy virgin was honoured there with sacred cult, both the miracles which she is said to have wrought living and dead, and especially the translation of her body, of which below, persuade: but whether at that time she was venerated also with a proper Office I would not dare to declare: for although her Life, which is found divided into six lessons in the very old codex of Claude Joly, canon of Paris, seems sufficiently ancient, in that it makes no mention whatever of the Norman irruption or of the translation made on that occasion; yet at what time that division was first made, or how great the antiquity of that codex is, I have not ascertained.

§ II. The destruction of the monastery of Oratorium by the Normans, the translation of the body of St. Angadrisma to Beauvais, her remarkable cult there and elsewhere.

Oratorium by the Normans Although there is no doubt that our St. Angadrisma left both her religious family and her monastery itself excellently established, yet that a miserable fortune overtook Oratorium after her decease, not much unlike that which overwhelmed the monastery of Flavigny Flay, of which it has been treated in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Geremar in our work, is established from the decree or bull of Pope Nicholas I confirming the union of Flay and Oratorium with the church of Beauvais granted by Charles the Bald to Odo of Beauvais; which, since as far as it pertains to our matter it is set before the eyes in our work at the place cited, I omit to repeat here entire: for the Pontiff testifies in his praised bull that it, together with Flay, lost its original splendour while civil sedition raged, and, having been destroyed for the great part of itself, was at length utterly overthrown by the barbarians bursting into Gaul, so that it could no longer be inhabited by religious virgins: Which monasteries, however (he says) (Flay and Oratorium), both before they had been conferred on seculars were not a little destroyed on account of the sedition of civil discord, and now on account of the barbarian incursion are entirely overthrown, so that not only have they been deprived of their own goods, but the choir of canons and sacred virgins who had formerly dwelt there has thence been for the greatest part removed, and the churches and all the buildings together have been destroyed.

[16] was destroyed together with Flay about the year 851 Oratorium, however, with some vigour, though perhaps diminished in its means and buildings (for whether after its first disaster, like Flay, it obtained a restorer is hidden), flourished until the year 831, as is clear from the testament or bequest of St. Ansegisus the abbot, made in the said year 831, which the chronicler of Fontenelle presents in d'Achéry, volume III of the Spicilegium, edited in the year 1659, where among very many things which he bequeathed to various monasteries this is had: To the monastery of Oratorium 15 solidi: but that it did not exist long after the mentioned year, nay that in the year 851, in which, as another chronicler of Fontenelle testifies, whose fragment from the year 841 to the year 856 Duchesne edited in volume 1 of the Writers of the History of the Franks, the fleet of the Normans entered the river Seine on the very third day before the Ides of October, under the leader Hoseri… meanwhile they burned the city of Beauvais and the monastery of Flay, it was utterly overthrown by the Normans, I judge: for although the praised chronicler does not expressly assert this of Oratorium, yet since the Normans both burned the city of Beauvais and overthrew the monastery of Flay, situated in the country of Beauvais, in the same onslaught, it is sufficiently likely that Oratorium, situated in the same country of Beauvais, did not escape their barbarous fury, raging, in their accustomed manner, especially against sacred places; certainly, since the oft-said Oratorium was still standing in the year 831, and already in the year 863, as Pope Nicholas complains in the bull praised above, given in that year, was entirely cut down, its ruin can be ascribed to no year more likely than 851, in which the barbarians overran the territory of Beauvais, laying it waste.

[17] nor ever afterwards restored: Pope Nicholas had indeed expressly provided in his praised decree that the aforesaid monasteries of Flay and Oratorium should be restored, but in this the fortune of Oratorium was inferior, that, although the restoration of both was neglected for many years on account, as I think, of the continual incursions of the barbarians, Flay was at length rebuilt in the eleventh century by Drogo, bishop of Beauvais, while Oratorium, all of whose possessions Warinus, his predecessor, had assigned to the chapter of Beauvais, remained buried in its ruins. The same Drogo, however, took care that another remarkable house of virgins, called St. Mary's at St. Paul's, in the village of St. Paul near the walls of the city of Beauvais, should be built, probably to supply the place of Oratorium, and so amply endowed, both from his own and from the offerings of other faithful, that 55 and more nuns might be fittingly maintained therein in perpetuity: see all these things in the praised Louvet, History of Beauvais, book IIII, where he presents a long catalogue of those who conferred their goods on the said monastery of St. Paul.

[18] but the saint's body, translated to Beauvais at that time, Let these things have been said somewhat more broadly, both to tear up the opinion of those who, as l'Oisel testifies, wrongly believe that St. Angadrisma presided as abbess over the monastery of St. Paul, among whom one may also number Aubert Le Mire in the Fasti Belgici, as we shall see below, since that was built 340 years, as is clear from what has been said, after her decease; and also so that the time may become known more clearly at which the sacred remains of the holy virgin were translated from the monastery of Oratorium to the collegiate church of St. Michael in the city of Beauvais, in which Claude Francis de Paule le Fèvre d'Ormesson, dean of Beauvais, testified in letters given to our elders that they were still kept in his time: for authors unanimously relate, after Louvet, that when the Normans, under the leader Hasting, were threatening ruin to the territory of Beauvais, the body of the holy virgin was translated to the mentioned church of St. Michael; Louvet, book 3, chapter 6, after narrating the deeds of St. Angadrisma which he had found out, writes this: Her body remained in the said abbey of Oratorium until the time of the Normans, when it was translated into the church of St. Michael at Beauvais, when (the body) of St. Ebrulf was placed in the principal church, where they are still today. And again, in the same book 3, chapter 11, mentioning the damages inflicted by the Normans, under the leader Hasting, on the dominion of Beauvais, he says: At their (the Normans') coming the bodies and relics of SS. Ebrulf, Justus, Geremar and Angadrisma were carried to Beauvais, where they have been preserved until now.

[19] is preserved almost entire in the church of St. Michael even today, Further, whether the whole body of the holy virgin is kept even today in the church of St. Michael, and certain parts of it have not been carried to other churches, is unknown to me: indeed the praised Louvet and l'Oisel do not mention that any of her relics were carried elsewhere, nor even Monsieur d'Ormesson in his letters given to our predecessors; but Baillet, although he confesses that not many relics from her sacred body were divided to other churches, nevertheless affirms that some part of it was granted to the cathedral church of Noyon, writing this at this day: There do not seem to have been many distributions of relics made from her (St. Angadrisma's) body; it cannot be denied that the canons of the church of Noyon have a certain small part of it, who in compensation gave certain relics of St. Eligius, their bishop, to the church of St. Michael at Beauvais; the credit of which matter, since he does not indicate whence he learned it, must rest with the author; but whether in fact the canons of Noyon conferred certain relics of St. Eligius, over the possession of whose body there was once so bitter a lawsuit between them and the religious of the monastery of St. Eligius, on the church of St. Michael, can be examined at the 1st day of December, on which the Acts of St. Eligius will, with Heaven's favour, have to be illustrated.

[20] That after obtaining her sacred body the people of Beauvais venerated St. Angadrisma with special devotion is declared by John de Marigniaco, commonly (de Marigni), bishop of the same city, in his decree given in the year 1321, and her sacred cult in which he testifies that her feast was customarily celebrated by the people in former times by cessation from servile works; the praised Louvet presents this decree in book 3, chapter VII, whence I transfer it here: John, by divine compassion bishop of Beauvais, to all the priests of the parish churches established in the city and suburb, everlasting greeting in the Lord: since, according to the institutions of the holy fathers and the precepts of the Church, the bodies and also the relics of the saints ought to be venerated by the Church militant after the example of the triumphant; and we have understood, by the pious representation of good and trustworthy persons, that in the city and suburb the festival of Blessed Angadrisma, virgin (whose body rests venerably in the church of Blessed Michael of Beauvais), was formerly accustomed to be venerably observed and also kept as a feast by the faithful of Christ in the aforesaid city and suburb once a year by ceasing from all servile work; and we have understood that the citizens and others of the said suburb subject to us, led away from their aforesaid pious veneration by negligence, entirely cease and desist: hence

it is that we, unwilling that the aforesaid pious and venerable custom should in our times be in any way detracted from and also derogated from, but desiring that it be enlarged as far as we can with God, admonish and exhort you and each of you in the Lord, nonetheless strictly commanding you and each of you in virtue of holy obedience and under pain of suspension, that you admonish in general all your parishioners and subjects, and effectually induce them to this by pious admonitions and preachings, setting forth the merits of the virgin herself and reciting them salutarily, that they, under pain of excommunication, on the second day before the Ides of October (on which her festival or birthday ought to be solemnly celebrated in that church, as is the custom), venerably keep the feast, entirely ceasing from all business and servile work, and that henceforth once a year they study to celebrate and also to keep as a feast the festival of this virgin on the second day before the Ides of October with all veneration. And we, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the merits and intercessions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of all the saints, mercifully relax twenty days of the penances enjoined on them to all truly penitent and having confessed who shall devoutly keep the festival of the mentioned virgin, and shall personally visit the aforesaid church of Blessed Michael on the aforesaid feast out of reverence for the same virgin. In testimony of which, etc. Given in the year 1321, on the first Thursday before the feast of Blessed Mark the Evangelist.*

[21] both at Beauvais, By this decree, therefore, the praised bishop of Beauvais studied primarily to renew the ancient devotion of the people of Beauvais towards their patroness, which had at that time lapsed, terrifying them with penalties and enticing them with the rewards of indulgences; but secondarily and in passing he establishes that her feast was still customarily celebrated in his own age with a solemn Office in a church of the same city: I judge, however, that the principal solemnity of her feast was carried out in the church of St. Michael: for in the Calendar and the manuscript Compendium of the Breviary of Beauvais, edited in the year 1554, her Office is not marked as so solemn; in the Calendar at the 14th day of October it is noted thus: Of Angadrisma, virgin, 9 lessons; and in the Compendium of the Breviary there is prescribed the prayer Exaudi, from the Common of Virgins, and 9 proper lessons: and afterwards the splendour of the same feast increased through the annual solemn procession instituted by Louis XI, king of the French, in the year 1473, on account of the city of Beauvais having been freed from siege and the arms of the duke of Burgundy repulsed, which benefit he especially credited to the merits and intercessions of St. Angadrisma; in which procession he ordered that the reliquary of the saint, the preserver, should be carried honourably through the city, as may be seen in l'Oisel, who presents the charter of the same king pertaining to this among the instruments of his History of Beauvais, page 350: Baillet adds that her translation is commemorated in the church of St. Michael on the 4th of February, at which day, however, I have found no Office of her marked in the before-praised Calendar and Breviary.

[22] and flourishes in the monastery of St. Paul and at Paris. Aubert Le Mire in his Fasti testifies that her cult is also celebrated in the house of virgins of St. Paul; who certainly, when he writes that she is venerated in the monastery of virgins near the walls of the city of Beauvais, over which, as he indeed judged, she presided as abbess, is to be understood of this ascetery of virgins of St. Paul, as is clear from what has been said before: nor do I doubt at all of the celebrity of her cult there, since the nuns of the same ascetery, as I understand from Gallia Christiana, volume IX, column 813, glory that their monastery was built in the same place in which Oratorium had previously stood, and in St. Angadrisma as once their abbess. Moreover, as becomes clear from the Register of Benefices of the diocese of Paris, the holy virgin has a chapel dedicated to her name in the collegiate church of St. Marcellus, built in that place where there was once a suburban village, endowed with the burial of St. Marcellus, as the authors of the praised Gallia Christiana relate, volume VII, column 15; but now, the city having grown, it is a suburb of Paris, likewise called from St. Marcellus the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.

Perhaps institutione & praecepto*.