Bercharius

ON ST. BERCHARIUS, MARTYR, ABBOT AND FOUNDER OF THE MONASTERIES OF HAUTVILLERS AND MONTIER-EN-DER,

IN THE YEAR 685.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Bercharius, abbot and martyr, in the monastery of Der. (S.)

BY J. V. H.

§ I. Memory in the sacred calendars, cult and Acts.

The cult of St. Bercharius is proven Although the memory of St. Bercharius, abbot and Martyr, does not occur in the principal and older Martyrologies of Ado and Usuard, which with others we call Classical, there is nevertheless no reason for us to doubt his cult, which the present Roman Martyrology announces. For his very Life, written in the tenth century by Adso, as we shall see below, testifies at no. 26 that a few years after his death St. Bercharius was adorned with public cult on account of the frequency of miracles. At the death of so great a man, it says, religious men flocking together from all sides, he was buried in a certain place outside the monastery, strong there, God granting it, in many effects of miracles. But since the Lord no longer wished to hide his Saint, from the aforesaid miracle of the little knife and the others shown at the tomb of the holy man, it seemed to the servants of God that the body of the Blessed Father ought to be translated thence, and they, having translated it thence, entombed it behind the altar, in the basilica of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which he himself had built while living, where, his merits supporting, many gifts are bestowed on the peoples, etc. And it is known that solemn translations and elevations of the body constituted the beginnings of ecclesiastical cult Compare Benedict XIV, De Canonizatione Sanctorum, book I, chapter 6, no. 2.

[2] from diplomas The cult of the same Saint is maintained by various diplomas issued in the ninth and tenth centuries, which Nicolas Camuzat recites in the Promptuarium of the sacred antiquities of the diocese of Troyes: first of all, by one of them Fol. 84 verso Charles the Bald granted the monastery of Der a privilege of every kind of exemption from the jurisdiction of counts and officials, and of full liberty in the election of the abbot: Given on the 9th before the Kalends of February (24 January) in the 18th year of the reign of Charles, the most glorious King. Done at Quierzy, the palace of the king. (Since Quierzy, situated in Belgica Secunda, belonged to Austrasia, I judge that the years of the reign run from the death of his father, and on that account I refer the charter to the year 857 of the common era.) And in this diploma King Charles calls the inhabitants of the territory of Der the men of St. Peter and St. Bercharius; so that already then the basilica of Der seems to have been dedicated under the invocation of St. Peter and St. Bercharius. The same is taught by the diploma of Gualo, bishop of Troyes, by which he grants two altars to the monastery of Der, or to Adso, of the monastery of St. Peter, where the body of St. Bercharius rests. Done at the city of Troyes publicly on the 8th day before the Ides (6th) of September, in the 17th year of the reign of our Lord King Lothar. On which diploma I note a few things: namely, it is not clear with what year of the common era the 17th year of King Lothar, son of Louis IV or d'Outremer, coincides. For four beginnings of his reign are determined, as may be seen in the authors of the book L'art de vérifier les dates. Since, however, by far the greater part of Lothar's diplomas begin the reign from the 12th day of November of the year 954, on which he was crowned at Reims, we take this year here also: whence we tie the 8th before the Ides of September of the 17th year to the year of Christ 971.

[3] and from martyrologies Although, therefore, Ado and Usuard are silent about our Saint, his ancient cult is nevertheless fully demonstrated from these records. Moreover not a few Martyrologies, though more recent, praise Bercharius. First of all, as we have already said, the present Roman one announces our Saint in these words: Of St. Bercharius, abbot and Martyr. To which elogium Cardinal Baronius, in the annotations to the Martyrology, subjoins the following note: Lest anyone… be deceived by the similarity of name, order, title and ministry, he ought to know that there was also Bertharius, abbot of Monte Cassino, likewise a martyr, killed by the Saracens before the altar of St. Martin in the monastery of Monte Cassino in the year of the Lord 884, as Leo of Ostia writes in the Chronicle of Monte Cassino, book I, chapters 35, 46 and 47, Peter the Deacon in the Book of the Illustrious Men of Monte Cassino, chapter 12, and Trithemius, On the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, book III, chapter 321. From St. Bertharius of Monte Cassino, whose Acts will be published at the 22nd day of October, our Bercharius is distinguished by age, country and the whole series of his life, as will be sufficiently clear from what follows.

[4] more recent ones The Usuardine Auctaria also celebrate the memory of St. Bercharius: in the very old exemplar of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, by a secondary hand indeed, says Mabillon in the preliminary observations to the Saint's Life, but one which easily shows four hundred years, it is read briefly written thus: "In the monastery of Der, of St. Bercharius, Martyr and abbot." To this codex may be joined the register of Utrecht in our Du Sollier on Usuard, Greven and Molanus, who under this day announce the translation of the Saint in these few words: On the same day, the translation of St. Bercharius, abbot and Martyr. Nor do the praised writers undeservedly indicate a translation, as the anonymous writer of the Miracles of St. Bercharius, to be published below, assures us, treating of the restoration of the monastery of Der in these words at number 7: This (church), long neglected by solitude, with thistles and briars bristling round the altars, the brethren and servants, coming together from all sides, lay up again in it with the glory of great praise the bones of the loving Shepherd on the 17th before the Kalends of November. This day was held from of old most celebrated in that place, by the anniversary of the Dedication of the same basilica, consecrated by the work of Blessed Bercharius, by the ordinance of God himself, in honour of the Holy Saviour. The solemnity of the prescribed day being thus doubled, it was decreed by the authority of the priests present that the birthday of the passion of the glorious Martyr Bercharius should be perpetually celebrated on that very day, which it is established took place when the paschal festivity was at hand, on account of which it remained uncelebrated according to the custom of the Christian religion. Hence grew up the joyfulness of this illustrious celebration, by which the times of our age are cheered until now.

[5] especially the Gallican ones. Du Saussay in his Gallican martyrology, according to his custom, presents a fairly long synopsis of his life. The Paris Martyrology of Cardinal de Noailles and that of Auxerre of Charles de Caylus recall the memory of the Saint on the day of his death, or the 7th before the Kalends of April (26th of March). And that of Auxerre has this special: In the monastery of Der, of the diocese of Châlons, of Saint Bercharius, founder and first abbot, whose Relics were carried to the great assembly held at the estate of Airiacum in the district of Auxerre (about the year 1020), there being present King Robert, Hugh of Chalon, bishop of Auxerre, Landeric, count of Auxerre, and many other nobles. Compare Jean Mabillon Acta SS. Ord. S. Bened., second century, p. 859 and D. Bouquet Recueil des Historiens de France, vol. X, pp. 172, 224 and 275. The Paris as well as the cited Auxerre Martyrology do not give St. Bercharius the title of Martyr, under which, however, the Churches of Châlons and Troyes venerate him with simple rite in red colour, and which other Martyrologies ascribe to him: which question we shall examine where we treat of his death. The Benedictine Menologies of Ménard and Bucelin also celebrate his memory. Ménard, however, in the observations at the 16th of October, says that St. Bercharius spent time as a monk under Abbot Eustasius in the monastery of Luxeuil; but we shall see below that the monastic profession of St. Bercharius is to be referred to the times of Abbot Waldebert. Bucelin evidently errs, as will afterwards be established, setting the year of the Saint's death as 660. The same, making no mention of the monastery of Der, has woven his narrative as if he had been killed in the monastery of Hautvillers, whereas from his Acts it is manifest that Der was the arena of his bloody slaying.

[6] A brief elogium of him: As a brief survey of the whole life of St. Bercharius I shall present what Hugues Ménard has in the place cited: St. Bercharius, he says, sprang from Aquitaine, of a noble family. Having left his country and parents, he went to St. Nivard, archbishop of Reims: and he (namely Bercharius), when he had been not moderately trained in piety by him, from zeal for a more perfect life betook himself to the monastery of Luxeuil: where he served as a soldier of Christ under the mastership of St. Eustasius (more truly St. Waldebert). Sufficiently imbued with the regular disciplines, he returned to St. Nivard, as the anonymous author of his Life relates in Nicolas Camuzat in the Promptuarium Antiquitatum. With the help and support of this holy pontiff he built the monastery of Hautvillers on the river Materna, or, as others call it, the Matrona (Marne): where he established monks under the Rule of St. Benedict and of St. Columbanus, as Flodoard teaches, book II, chapter 7. God manifested by a heavenly sign that the building of this monastery would be pleasing and agreeable to him… Desirous, however, of tranquillity, leaving the monastery of Hautvillers, he withdrew into the forest which is called Der… In the inmost recess of the forest he built a monastery in the diocese of Châlons, which is called after it the monastery of Der… In this monastery St. Bercharius, crowned with martyrdom, passed to Christ, slaughtered in his bed by a certain traitor Daguinus, monk of Der, whom he had raised from the sacred font. Thus Ménard.

[7] The ecclesiastical Office. Further, the silence of the classical Martyrologies sufficiently indicates that the cult of St. Bercharius was never widely propagated, indeed scarcely passed the bounds of the dioceses in which he had founded his monasteries. In the diocese of Reims no memory of him is made, so far as I have been able to discover, both from the older Breviary published by order of Louis of Lorraine in the year 1630 and from the liturgical Directory of the year 1829, which bears the name of the cardinal archbishop de Latil. With simple rite the dioceses of Châlons and Troyes celebrate the Saint as abbot and Martyr on the 16th day of October, as may be seen in the liturgical Calendars of the year 1829. Ancient papers found among us add "that the feast of the Saint was wont to be kept throughout the whole diocese of Sens: which is shown, as is said in the same place, by some things which exist in our literary equipment, of the metropolitan Church of Sens

Breviaries, in the first of which, published in the year 1604, at the 16th of October, if this does not fall on a Sunday, there is prescribed at Vespers and Lauds, after the Antiphons Beatus vir, etc., Qui odit, etc., as also at the other hours and at Mass, this prayer or collect to be recited concerning St. Bercharius: Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we who keep the birthday of Blessed Bercharius thy Martyr may be strengthened by his intercession in the love of thy name. But if the same day should be a Sunday, the said collect is ordered to be recited at Mass only. Likewise another Breviary of Sens, published by authority of Nicolas, Cardinal de Pellevé and archbishop, in the year 1625, prescribes only a commemoration of the Saint; but in the third Breviary of the same Church, which came to light in the year 1641 by order of Octave de Bellegarde, archbishop, the feast of the Saint is marked to be celebrated with simple rite; and St. Bercharius has a proper third lesson at matins, of which our manuscript compendium of that Breviary expresses only the beginning, in this manner: He was abbot of the monastery of Hautvillers." But today, according to the Calendar of the year 1827, the memory of St. Bercharius seems to be altogether blotted out, since no mention of him is made. I do not doubt that the feast of the Saint was formerly held more celebrated in both monasteries, of Der and of Hautvillers.

[8] The Acts of St. Bercharius to be published As regards the Acts of St. Bercharius, Nicolas Camuzat first made them public in the Promptuarium Antiquitatum of the Diocese of Troyes, no author's name being added: Jean Mabillon published the same with second care, collated with a manuscript codex of the monastery of St. Corneille of Compiègne Acta SS. Ord. S. Bened., second century, p. 831: who in his preliminary Observations assigns as their author Adso, successor of St. Bercharius in the government of Der, after many intervening. This opinion Laurentius Surius had already admitted before in the enlarged edition of the Lives of the Saints, which came out at Cologne in the year 1618; and afterwards Baillet in the Lives of the Saints, the Benedictine authors of the Literary History of France Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. VI, p. 489, and finally ours in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Nivard, archbishop of Reims Vol. I of September, p. 271, no. 18, at the 1st day of September, also embraced it. For the rest, that Adso composed a Life of St. Bercharius the anonymous monk of Der expressly testifies, both at the very beginning of the Book of Miracles and at no. 13 of the same book, where he speaks thus: And the deeds of this Saint, our most loving protector Bercharius, he, adorning them to the utmost of his power with the charm of a notable eloquence, spread abroad to the shores of all Gaul, which until then had been held roughly written and hidden. And since this author flourished, as we shall see below, less than a whole century after Adso's death, in the very monastery of Der, and was therefore excellently informed about his writings, his authority ought to render it certain and undoubted to us that a certain Life of our Saint was in fact written by Adso.

[9] have as their author, Further, that the Life which Nicolas Camuzat and others published is not different from the Adsonian one is indicated by sufficiently sure marks, by which the praised monk of Der distinguished it; on whose witness Adso had thought to commit to writing not only the life of St. Bercharius but also the miracles performed after his death: But what (miracles), says that author of the book of miracles at no. 1, he (Adso) had promised that he would relate as recompensed after the death of the blessed man by the divine benefit to his merits, he by no means set forth, leaving also untouched very many of the things noted, namely disturbed by the hindrances of divers activities, and above all cut off by the event of a hasty death. Now the author of the published Life promises in altogether the same words in the prologue that after the life he will also write the miracles of the Saint, where he speaks thus: We intend, therefore, to pursue those things which either shone forth as noted by his own domestic and most holy college, or afterwards, recompensed to his merits by the divine benefit, could be carried down to our age. Which words surely show so clearly that this is the genuine work of Adso that it is wonderful that Le Cointe [Annales Francorum at the year 656, §7, vol. III, p. 425], and Pagi, who followed him Critica Baronii at the year 685, §14, went off into the contrary opinion and wished to ascribe the published Life to a certain Anonymous older than Adso.

[10] whatever may be said against it by The only security Le Cointe and Pagi offer for their opinion is the words of Nicolas Camuzat, which, in Le Cointe's judgment, easily settle the dispute. For he says in his Promptuarium Fol. 86 verso: When the work of the printers had proceeded thus far in printing the history of St. Bercharius, very opportunely and agreeably to the wish of my mind, there came into my hands a handwritten little book containing the same history divided into two volumes. The former contains what was printed above, yet somewhat more fully and richly, since it relates that the same St. Bercharius departed from life on the day on which the solemnity of Christ rising again is celebrated, in the year 685. The latter reviews very many things most worthy of record which happened in the monastery of Der, and also many excellent miracles done by the merits of the blessed Martyr himself. "Hence," says Le Cointe, "it is clear that two histories were written of the Life, or, as the title bears, of the Passion of St. Bercharius, of which Camuzat took care that the one should be printed, the other we grieve lies hidden in darkness still unpublished. The question is which of them was written by Asso. Of the two volumes or books which Camuzat obtained after publishing the Passion of St. Bercharius, the former contained the very work of Asso, and was omitted by the same Camuzat, who, since he had already brought forward a history almost exactly similar, did not wish to repeat the same matter twice with the style little changed. But the latter volume or book, which was entitled of the divers fortunes of the monastery of Der and of the miracles of St. Bercharius, was written by a monk of Der, who at the beginning of his writing very openly declared what had been written by Abbot Asso, thus: The execution of this earlier work (namely the Life of St. Bercharius), by the ordinance of the divine condescension, for informing the memory of posterity, the remarkable prudence of the most skilful Asso, abbot of the often-named church of Der, ennobled with most brilliant speech." Thus Le Cointe.

[11] Le Cointe, But that Le Cointe's assertion is of no weight shines out from this, that in many exemplars containing both volumes or books the same Life or Passion which Camuzat printed is found: Jean Mabillon is witness in the preliminary Observations to the Saint's Life that the Compiègne manuscript was such. I have before me a codex written by hand from the monastery of Anchin which in every part, if you except a few things, agrees with the Troyes edition of Camuzat. These things already show in what sense the words of the editor are to be taken when he says that the handwritten little book which came into his hands, the history of the Life being already printed, set forth certain things somewhat more fully and richly: he declares the richness by an example; namely, that the manuscript relates that St. Bercharius departed from life on the day on which the solemnity of Christ rising again is celebrated, in the year 685. And everyone sees that similar additions occur in most manuscript codices, without our feigning to ourselves different authors on that account. Indeed Jean Mabillon, with whom Philibert Boulanger had communicated the manuscript of Der, judged that nothing was to be changed, except a few things which set forth the death of our Saint more accurately, as we shall see below.

[12] [who] There is another thing which persuades that the Life published by Camuzat is the genuine offspring of Adso. The anonymous author of the second book, or of the miracles of St. Bercharius, says at no. 13 that Adso, adorning to the utmost of his power with the charm of a notable eloquence the Deeds of the holy and most loving protector Bercharius, spread abroad to the shores of all Gaul what until then had been held roughly written and hidden. I do not wish indeed to dwell on the question by which it would be investigated whether another biography existed before Adso, as Jean Mabillon thinks, or whether rather certain ancient records kept scattered at Der lit the way for Adso: for the sayings of the Anonymous may be taken in either sense, as also those which Adso himself has in his prologue, that he pursues those things which either shone forth as noted by his own domestic and most holy college, or afterwards, recompensed to his merits by the divine benefit, could be carried down to his age. Omitting a question of this kind, it is certainly deduced from the sayings of the Anonymous that that work which is more common is to be ascribed to Adso, but that which is more hidden to an older writer: for the earlier records of Der were hidden; but what Adso wrote was spread abroad to the shores of all Gaul.

[13] is refuted, These things being laid down, it can be doubtful to no one which of the two biographies is the more common: the one Camuzat published was found in manuscript at Compiègne, as Mabillon testifies; I have before me copies from the codices of Longpont, of Cîteaux, of Anchin, which was also collated with the autograph of the monastery of La Charité: those copies, a very few things excepted, altogether agree with one another. But of the other Life no trace has yet been able to be found: by the judgment, therefore, of the Anonymous himself it is manifest that the work of Adso is before us; and that the older Life, if any ever existed, has altogether perished. To this also contributes the fact that the published Acts are not, as the Anonymous speaks of the older ones, written roughly or in a crude style, but rather are not moderately adorned with various circumlocutions of words and little flowers, so that in style they are so akin to other Lives of the Saints composed by Adso, who was wont mostly to comprise few things in many words, and already published in our Work, for example the Life of St. Mansuetus, bishop of Toul of the Leuci Vol. I of September, p. 637, that from this also it can be concluded that the author of the Life of St. Bercharius was no other than Adso.

[14] Abbot Adso, Finally, to come nearer to Le Cointe's argument, it is by no means established that the year of St. Bercharius's death was expressed in the biography sent from Der. Certainly Jean Mabillon, who subjoins to the published Life what Philibert Boulanger, monk of Der, had sent him, did not find this year expressed in the narrative of the slaying of St. Bercharius; since in it it is only said that, loosed from the flesh on the morning of the Sunday, the very day of his most holy Resurrection from the dead, he (Bercharius) happily sought with exulting spirit the joys of the heavenly life. Then he notes beneath that in the same manuscript these things are read: This Blessed Father Bercharius met the last day of his life in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord DCXXCV, in the 13th Indiction, the 11th Epact, on the 6th (better 7th) before the Kalends of April, on the holy morning of the Lord's Resurrection. From which manner of speaking it seems to me to be insinuated clearly enough that the above words are a gloss on the text, taken from some other record; nor indeed is it in my mind to weaken its authority; I say one thing, that the gloss does not belong to the text, and accordingly whatever strength could remain to Le Cointe's argument is broken. Nothing, therefore, ought to hinder us from continuing, with the authors praised above at no. 8, for the reasons adduced, to ascribe the published Life without doubt to Adso, abbot of Der.

[15] whose elogium is woven It will not be foreign to our purpose to subjoin some things concerning Adso. The anonymous writer of the miracles of St. Bercharius praises him earnestly, as will be seen below

to be published, no. 12 and following; and with him as guide the Benedictine authors of the Literary History of France treat of him Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. VI, p. 471, and our forebears in various places [Vol. I of September, p. 616, no. 3 and following, and vol. V of September, p. 56, no. 6], especially in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Aper, bishop of Toul. I transcribe here the words of Constantine Suysken, some things being added: Adso (born of noble stock in the Jura tract of Burgundy) was flourishing in the Vosges, or in the monastery of Luxeuil, with the fame of learning as well as of sanctity, when he was summoned to Toul by the bishop and clergy of Toul to the mastership of the sacred order. This happened under St. Gauzlin, bishop, who had happily restored the discipline that had collapsed in the monastery of St. Aper; which it was said in the Preliminary Commentary on the deeds of the same Saint at the 7th day of September Vol. III of September, p. 135, no. 30 is more probably to be tied to the year of Christ 935. In that monastery he had taught for some volumes of time, when he was sent to the monastery of Der, of the diocese of Châlons in Champagne, whose restoration (after the calamities which our writer of the miracles relates, it having almost collapsed) the same St. Gauzlin had likewise undertaken, probably about the middle of the tenth century, according to what was said (in the Preliminary Commentary on the deeds of St. Gauzlin Ibid., p. 139, no. 48). He was at length set as abbot over the monks of Der after Alberic, and in the year 992, sailing to Jerusalem for the sake of religion, he departed from the living, and was committed to the earth in the island of Astilia. For the rest, it is uncertain in precisely what year Adso undertook the headship of Der, since the year of death of Alberic his predecessor still lies hidden, unknown. Yet that it happened not later than the year 969 our John Limpens proves in the Preliminary Commentary on St. Mansuetus at the 3rd day of September Ibid., p. 616, no. 4 from the letters of donation given by St. Gerard of Toul in that year, which Abbot Adso subscribed. For a similar reason, if the beginning of the reign of King Lothar were certainly established, which, as we have already said, most diplomas tie to the 12th of November of the year 954, Adso would have to be said to have already held the helm of Der at the beginning of the common year 968, since Nicolas Camuzat in the Promptuarium Fol. verso 85 presents a charter of Count Heribert, given on the 16th before the Kalends of February (17th January) in the 14th year of the reign of the Lord King Lothar of the Franks; that is, in the year 968, in which mention is made of Adso as abbot. But there is no need to inquire more laboriously into the beginning of his government, since he seems to have written the Life of our Saint not long before his death; for, hindered by death, as the anonymous writer of the Miracles witnesses at no. 1, he could not carry out his purpose, and left that same Life diminished of the miracles whose narrative he had promised in the prologue.

[16] and his style is examined. The praised authors of the Literary History have already observed Histoire littéraire, vol. VI, p. 489 that the Life written by Adso is for the greater part put together only of more general encomiums of virtues, and that very few particular deeds of the Saint are set forth in it, not without errors mixed in here and there: but that is not greatly to be wondered at: for Adso, distant three centuries from the age of St. Bercharius, who died about the end of the seventh century, was too remote to be able to write a Life which should set forth all his deeds in detail and in such order as not to stumble somewhere into certain chronological and other errors. Yet Adso, discharging the office of abbot at Der, had various ancient instruments regarding the holy founder of that same monastery lighting his way, as we said above at no. 12; perhaps also an older Life: if in fact this, as Mabillon, Le Cointe and Pagi judge, written by some Anonymous before Adso's age, survived the calamities of the monastery of Der recorded in the book of miracles. For which cause credence does not seem to be denied him, unless a greater authority somewhere urges the contrary, especially since his sayings can be confirmed here and there from other records of proven credibility to be brought forward or cited below. This work of Adso has accordingly seemed to us worthy that we should reprint it here from the second century of the Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti, collated with the Troyes and Cologne editions and with our manuscript copies of Anchin and Longpont, which is somewhat more contracted, as we shall indicate in their places.

[17] To the Life is subjoined a book of miracles After the Passion or Life we shall publish also another work, which, since it relates not only the miracles of the Saint but also the various calamities by which the monastery of Der was afflicted, is entitled Second Book of the fortunes of the monastery of Der and of the miracles of St. Bercharius. That its author was a monk of Der we have already said before; and that is clear enough: for he frequently designates St. Bercharius by the appellation of our Father, Protector and Patron, and whenever he speaks of the monks of Der, he calls them our brethren or seniors. Nor less clearly does the same author indicate his age at no. 16, where he writes that the monastery of Der, restored by Alberic and Adso, flourished greatly until the passing of the Lord Bruno, … who governed the church (of Der) … for seven lustra. For hence it follows that the author put his hand to writing when Bruno indeed was dead, but yet not long after his death, since he professes that he was urged to write by the frequently repeated commands of that same Bruno.

[18] written in the eleventh century. Now this Bruno, as he also says in the same place, was ordained abbot at Rome by the holy Pope Leo IX, being given his surname with the pastoral staff; and this was done in the second year of the pontificate of Leo, as is clear from the letter of the same Pontiff to William, count of Nevers Gallia Christiana, vol. IX, col. 917, which is read as given on the Kalends of May by the hands of Peter the librarian … in the second year of the Lord Pope Leo IX, in the third indiction, to the abbot of St. Bercharius, whom on the same day he had blessed as abbot in his Lateran chapel and had given him his own name, which was Bruno. Therefore, to the second year of St. Leo, that is, of the Christian era 1050, seven lustra or 35 years being added, there will arise the year 1085, in which Bruno died, and about which accordingly our Anonymous gave his labour to writing the miracles of the Saint. Further, since, from what has been said, the author was later than Adso by less than a whole century, and therefore wrote at a time when there still remained a sufficient memory of the miracles performed in the time of Adso's government, from which he takes the beginning of his writing, and since among the miracles written by him there were very many, as he says at the same no. 16, seen by Bruno, or handed down by those who saw them or supported by the testimony of faithful and truthful men … likewise … some noted on slips by the hands (of Bruno), credence can, in my opinion, safely be given to the narrator. We now undertake to discuss the deeds of St. Bercharius, keeping order as far as can be done.

§ II. The native country of Saint Bercharius, the time of his birth, his monkhood at Luxeuil.

The Saint is born in Aquitaine, That St. Bercharius was an Aquitanian Adso declares at no. 1 of the Life to be published below: The records of the former time, he says, have handed down that the district of Aquitaine was his birthplace and the beginning of his race. His parents were venerable in life and very religious in their life, adorned not moderately with outward abundance of goods, and (what is far more excellent) distinguished by a certain privilege of singular innocence and of happy successes among their own. By which words he indicates indeed that Aquitaine was the native country of the Saint, without, however, openly signifying in what part of that most vast region he was born. Valois, describing that region of Gaul in the Notitia Galliarum, says: At first indeed Aquitaine was one and simple, between the Pyrenees and the Garonne and the Ocean … then also, long after its boundaries had been extended by Augustus as far as the Loire, it continued to be one province of Aquitaine… Afterwards, by the ordinance of Constantine the Great, as I think, two provinces were made out of one, the one Aquitaine, the other called Novempopulana from the Novempopuli… Finally, the Novempopuli remaining, Aquitaine was divided in two into Aquitanica Prima and Aquitanica Secunda: Bourges was made the metropolis of the province of Aquitanica Prima, Bordeaux of the Secunda.

[20] in the tract, as it seems, of Poitiers, Adso designates the Saint's birthplace more closely when he says in the place cited: For among the other things which this holy man had received from the dowry of the heavenly dispensation, it is certain that he also flourished temporally with no mean titles of paternal inheritance from his forefathers, which, namely, if anyone diligently wishes, it is easy to recognise, since almost down to these our times those who are proven to have succeeded him in the government of his monastery are seen to have possessed with quiet right, through long courses of time, estates and lands of his right established both beyond the Loire, where it is called Diseiae, and also within the bounds of Aquitaine. These words of Adso insinuate that our Saint, inasmuch as his principal inheritance is called Diseiae, had his parents dwelling there, and accordingly that he was more probably born and brought up in that same place. St. Bercharius himself, in the charter of handing over to be cited below, when he treats of the foundation of Der, says that his inheritance, which had come to him by law from paternal and maternal succession, was situated in the estate of Diseium beyond the Loire on the river Crete. There survives indeed to our own times, on the river Clain, two French leagues distant from Poitiers towards the north, a village called Dissais, which agrees most fittingly if for the river Crete, Clanis, Clenis or Clitis is written. The name of the river Crete occurs to me only near Valence in the department of the Drôme (Département de la Drôme): as Baudrand witnesses, Crestidium or Crestum, le Crest, is a village sitting on a stream of the same name; but this place by no means fits with Aquitaine. For the rest, the labour was vain in seeking the river Crete beyond the Loire, nor did laborious investigations shed any light in the Atlas of Cassini and in the hydrographical map of France most kindly communicated to us by Mr. Ph. Vander Maelen, a man most deserving in geography. Unless, therefore, anyone prefers to divine that the river Clain was formerly also called Crete, the opinion will, I do not doubt, be probable to many that the drowsiness of the copyists expressed the word corruptly; which will also be shown below, when the title of archbishop, unwonted in that age, will be found added to the name of Nivard. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that several places recited in the charter of Bercharius easily occur to one inspecting the map, for example Britellum, Breuil; Musciacum, Moussais; Saviniacum, Savigny; Gravisium, la Grève; Aliacum, Aillé; Nuhileium, Nieuil; and if it is not possible to find all, that happens perhaps either because the names of the places have been blotted out, or are expressed faultily in the diploma itself: or finally because these places are not so near to Diseium, since it is said in the text: estates and lands both beyond the Loire … and within the bounds of Aquitaine, that is, as I think, in further Aquitaine.

[21] of noble parents, Further, since we have from the above words of Adso that the parents of St. Bercharius were adorned not moderately with outward abundance of goods, there can scarcely be doubt that they were at the same time conspicuous for nobility: for at the time at which the Saint lived, riches were mostly joined with nobility of lineage. But what Edmond Baugier asserts Mémoires historiques de la Province de Champagne, vol. II, p. 155, that the Saint's father was duke of Aquitaine, is not so likely: for although it is certain that in the seventh century dukes administered Aquitaine, yet because nothing is said of that Aquitanian dukedom of his father by Adso or by Almann the monk, biographer of St. Nivard, credence ought not to be given to Edmond Baugier, who asserts it without any suitable reason. Especially since the governors of the tract of Poitiers, where our Saint was probably born, did not arrogate to themselves the title of dukes of Aquitaine before the middle of the ninth century, as the Benedictine authors of the History of Aquitaine show Histoire Générale du Languedoc, vol. I, p. 723.

[22] not indeed in the reign of At what time the Saint was brought into the light cannot easily be determined. The biographer hints at no. 2 that he was born when Childeric II held the kingdom of Austrasia and St. Nivard presided over the Church of Reims; for he says: At that time (of the birth of St. Bercharius), King Childeric most happily ordering the empire of the Franks … Blessed Nivard … presided over the holy Church of the Remi. Now that the beginning of St. Nivard's episcopate is to be fixed about the middle of the seventh century our Stilting taught at the 1st day of September, in the Commentary preliminary to his Life Vol. I of September, p. 270, no. 12, and Childeric II began to govern Austrasia in the year 660: before which year, accordingly, if one is to stand by the marks laid down by the biographer, the Saint's birth cannot be placed; but with this time of birth the rest of the chronology of his life is not reconciled. For if the Saint is said to have been born not before the year 660, he was not of a suitable age to whom, while the same king was living (who survived only to the year 673), the care of building and ruling the monastery of Hautvillers could have been committed by St. Nivard. And if the Saint's birth is set at the beginning of St. Nivard's episcopate, that is, about the year 650, not all difficulty will be avoided: for it is not credible that the Saint (if he is supposed to have been born about the middle of the seventh century), after completing the years of adolescence, went to St. Nivard, was then so imbued with discipline in the monastery of Luxeuil that, they are the words of Adso at no. 11, fortified on both sides of the divine warfare, he could already consult for the salvation of very many, in the dispensing of the Lord's gain, what he had learned by long exercise, and founded both monasteries, of Hautvillers and of Der, and presided over them with the title of abbot. Surely all these things are with difficulty compressed between the year 650 and 673 or 674, about which Stilting at the 1st of September Vol. I of September, p. 276, no. 34 shows probably that St. Nivard died.

[23] Childeric II, I think, therefore, that the Saint is said by the biographer to have been born under the reign of Childeric II and the episcopate of St. Nivard because his more illustrious deeds were joined with this epoch; for it is customary, says Mabillon in a note on this text, for authors who have committed to letters the deeds of the Saints to affirm that each was born under the same king under whom he flourished. However that may be, all recognise that the Saint was brought into the light long before St. Nivard's episcopate, for the reason adduced in the preceding number, although there is not one opinion as to the time of his birth. Adrien Baillet and Alban Butler at this day maintain that the Saint was born about the year 636, on what foundation they do so I do not know. Nevertheless his birth seems to be put back some years, since the said Baillet, Butler being silent, following Jean Mabillon Annales, book XV, §23, vol. I, p. 429 and Antoine Pagi Critica Baronii at the year 662, §5, determines that the monastery of Hautvillers was founded in the year 662: in which case our Saint would have been appointed abbot of this monastery in about the 26th year of his age; which, because it would have been unusual for anyone to be set as abbot at such youth, and would accordingly have contributed not a little to the praise of St. Bercharius, would probably not have escaped the diligence of the biographer Adso. Then, as I showed in the preceding number, the very series of his life indicates something altogether different: namely, he was first taught letters in his native country, in adult age he was sent to St. Nivard, he was exercised under the discipline of Remaclus, and at length went to Luxeuil, and there spent some years under monastic discipline; all which things prevent his deeds up to the founding of Hautvillers from being enclosed within the narrow limits of twenty-six years.

[24] but under Clothar II, about the year 623; Le Cointe At the year 612, §24, vol. II, p. 635 thinks St. Bercharius was born about the year of Christ 608: both because he makes him a disciple of St. Remaclus while still procurator of the royal treasury Ibid., §17, and accordingly before the year 628, when he laid down that office: and above all because from Adso he believes that he was a monk under Eustasius, abbot of Luxeuil, who died in the year 625 Acta SS. 29 March, p. 784, no. 1. But neither assertion has anything of solid foundation, as will be shown below. Jean Mabillon Acta SS. Bened., second century, p. 832, note a, assigning no determined year, determines that he was born under the principate of Clothar II, who held the kingdom from the year 613 to 628. By which opinion I think we must stand, in so far as we fix the birth of our Saint nearer to the end of Clothar's government: and accordingly I should not judge him far from the truth who thought that the Saint's birth should be ascribed to the year 625: for then all things proceed duly, nor does anything occur which is opposed to this opinion; and indeed in this opinion the Saint, as Adso's narrative requires, having passed the years of adolescence in his native country, went to St. Nivard at the beginning of his episcopate, afterwards, sufficiently imbued with monastic discipline at Luxeuil and become of suitable age, that is, about thirty-six years, could take up about the year 662 the government of the monastery of Hautvillers.

[25] first called Bereus, From his birth the name Bererus was given to the Saint, or, as Camuzat has it, Bereus, indeed our Anchin copy has Herrerus; and that name, according to Adso, signifies lord of a good inheritance. What is to be said of this meaning of the word Bererus or Bereus I do not know: to elucidate it somehow by conjectures would be to waste labour, since interpretations of this kind, sometimes used by the biographers of the Saints, mostly displease the learned. If the Anchin reading were more certain, and it were established that Adso, born in the land of the Jura, spoke German, the interpretation would be easy, the word Herrerus signifying Erfheer, lord of an inheritance. But if the Saint truly had that name from boyhood, it is necessary that it was afterwards changed; for Adso himself always and everywhere calls him Bercharius, and the same is done by Almann the monk in the Life of St. Nivard; St. Nivard also, in the charter of privilege granted to the monastery of Hautvillers, and the Saint himself, in the letters of donation for the monastery of Der, writes Bercharius. The praised Almann asserts that Bercharius was received from the sacred font by St. Nivard the bishop: but that this is uncertain, since it is read neither in Adso nor in Flodoard, Stilting has already observed on the Life of St. Nivard Vol. I of September, p. 271, no. 18. But if this was done, he says, it must have happened before the episcopate of Nivard, since Adso affirms that Bercharius was reborn of the sacred font as soon as he had come into the light. Before his episcopate also St. Nivard must have undertaken the Aquitanian journey of which Adso speaks at no. 3, when, lodging with the parents of St. Bercharius, he wondered at the good disposition of Bercharius, still a boy. I should believe, therefore, these are the words of Stilting in the place cited, that St. Nivard is called bishop already then because he afterwards obtained that dignity.

[26] as a youth Yet, if only Adso's narrative of this journey of St. Nivard is regarded, it could be concluded that such was not Adso's mind: but that he in fact thought that St. Nivard, when he undertook the Aquitanian journey, was already adorned with the episcopal dignity: but, whatever the biographer thought, for the reason given above, and above all on account of the time of St. Bercharius's birth, it seems certain that that journey was undertaken before the episcopate. And although Adso was deluded concerning the time of the journey, and neither Almann nor Flodoard mention it, yet that it took place ought not to be denied. For it is established from Flodoard [Hist. Rem. Eccl., book I, chapter 10, Bibliotheca Maxima Patrum, vol. XVII, p. 537] that St. Nivard possessed from his maternal inheritance beyond the Loire, that is, within the bounds of Aquitaine, various goods which sometimes required the presence of the possessor, so that even from this the journey narrated by Adso becomes likely. Further, St. Nivard, lodging on this journey with our Saint's parents, when he wondered, these are the words of the biographer at no. 3, at a certain appearance of future character in the boy, a candidate for good work, and already judged beforehand by divine instinct that he was to be applied to the sacred mysteries, persuaded them to take care that their son be imbued with letters. But to what masters the holy boy was handed over by his parents, as well as the other things which he did as a boy and youth in his father's house, Adso wraps in silence, except that he extols his remarkable progress in knowledge and virtues with the following praises at no. 4: When, therefore, the boy of good disposition surpassed his contemporaries both in knowledge and in virtue of mind, and had determined by degrees, from the beginnings of good intention, to aim at a more perfect novitiate of the heavenly warfare … he began to aspire higher, sufficient in contempt of earthly things, and, attempting with all his efforts, in view of perennial glory, those things which regard the increases of virtues, to set eternal things unweariedly before his eyes, … to restrain with divers kinds of afflictions the strivings of carnal affections, and to strengthen the steps of adolescence with the virtue of divine love.

[27] goes to St. Nivard; These more general praises being set forth, the biographer presently relates that the Saint, leaving his native country, went to St. Nivard at Reims, and that this again, if we hear the same biographer, was done when Childeric II was already reigning in Austrasia and St. Nivard presiding over the Church of Reims. But, as we have already said beforehand, the biographer compresses the whole age of St. Bercharius within the narrow limits of Childeric's reign, that is, between the year 660 and 674. This indeed is more probable, that the Saint came to Reims when St. Nivard had obtained the cathedra of the same Church: which, as we have said above, happened about the year 650. And such was St. Bercharius already then that, if credence is to be given to the biographer, the most blessed bishop could safely commit to him no small part of pastoral solicitude; which confirms our opinion that the Saint was born scarcely later than the year 625. This man, then, says the biographer at the cited number, the blessed

pontiff, having obtained, as he had always wished, such and so great a helper, since he himself had been entangled in the outward business of handling the commonwealth, to be frequently present at the counsels and acts of the royal disposition, bearing willy-nilly by heavenly ordinance the weight of pontifical providence, assiduously exercising, as a perfect husbandman, the ministry enjoined on him, both publicly and privately, by rebuking, arguing, beseeching, was filled with no small joy at having obtained a familiar helper and a most devoted partner in divine works. Which last words indicate that St. Bercharius took up the order of the priesthood shortly after his coming to Reims, for which, according to the discipline of the seventh century, the 30th year was required. Behold, we are led back again to referring the time of the Saint's birth to about the year 625.

[28] not yet a priest For that he had not been initiated into the priesthood before his departure from Aquitaine the words of Adso related at the same number make probable to me, by which it is insinuated clearly enough that Bercharius left his native country while still a youth. When, therefore, he says, the boy of holy disposition shortly surpassed his contemporaries both in knowledge and in virtue of mind … he began to aspire higher … and to strengthen the steps of adolescence with the virtue of divine love. Then, spurning the restraints of his kinsfolk and his country, … he burns with ardour to seek out the Most Holy Nivard, pontiff of the Remi. Then, after the most ample praises bestowed on the holy prelate, he proceeds: Provoked, then, by the grace of so great a reputation of this man, the happy youth Bercharius, most fit for the ecclesiastical sacraments in faith, habit and act, sharing the faith and merit of that blessed old man to whom it had long before been said by the Lord, Go forth out of thy land, etc., leaving his kindred and country, after the course of a long labour enters the bounds of Francia, to be with St. Nivard the pontiff a most happy citizen … of the holy Church of Reims. From these words it is sufficiently clear that Bercharius migrated from his native country in adolescence, and accordingly before taking up the priesthood, and by ordination, according to the custom of those times, was made a most happy citizen of the holy Church of Reims. But since immediately after these words follow those which we cited in the preceding number, it becomes evident also that he was initiated into the priesthood not so long after his coming to St. Nivard, to be cultivated, however, more accurately afterwards in the sciences and virtues by which he might render more useful service to the labouring Church. St. Bercharius, then, is handed over to be formed by Remaclus, procurator of the sacred treasury of the palace, the venerable reputation of whose prudence, says Adso at no. 5, commended by titles of sanctity, had grown up everywhere: who, namely, a renowned man, afterwards a glorious confessor of the Lord, approved by many mighty signs, gentle to all, kindly to everyone, modest in prosperity, most patient in adversity, laudable in life, affable in speech, so cautiously handled temporal things that he never turned eternal things away from his eyes.

[29] he is handed over to be educated by a certain Remaclus Mabillon in the preliminary Observations to the Life of St. Bercharius, and ours in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Remaclus at the 3rd day of September Vol. I of September, p. 673, no. 18, doubt whether Remaclus, the preceptor of our Saint, is the same as the holy bishop of Maastricht, which Adrien Baillet absolutely denies in a marginal note to the Life of St. Bercharius. Certainly, by reason of time, nothing stands in the way of the Saint having been under the discipline of St. Remaclus: for they were so contemporary that the one surpassed the other in age. But opposite reasons plainly overturn this proof, such as it is. First of all, Adso wove a splendid elogium indeed, as we have just seen, without, however, touching by a word either his episcopate among the people of Maastricht or the two most noble monasteries founded at his urging and care, namely Malmedy and Stavelot; which surely the writer would not have passed over in silence, who not only brought in mention of the procuratorship of the royal treasury, but also so concludes the encomium that everything is to be referred to the office of procurator: He so cautiously handled temporal things that he did not turn eternal things away from his eyes. Then, since St. Remaclus of Maastricht was more probably consecrated bishop at the beginning of the year 648, as ours show in the Preliminary Commentary to his Life Ibid., p. 675, no. 21, and accordingly before the pontificate of St. Nivard, who could not ascend the cathedra of Reims before the 2nd before the Ides of March (14th of March) of the year 649, when his predecessor Lando died [Compare Le Cointe at the year 649, §9, vol. III, p. 239, and ours, vol. I of September, p. 270, no. 12], no time is left suitable for forming St. Bercharius.

[30] different from his namesake of Maastricht, Le Cointe indeed At the year 612, §17, vol. II, p. 631 contends that our Saint's discipline under St. Remaclus preceded the 33rd year of the seventh century: because, as Adso witnesses, this was done when St. Remaclus, still a layman, was discharging the office of procurator of the royal treasury at the court, in the reign of Clothar II, who met his last day in the 28th year of the same century. But concerning this office administered by St. Remaclus there is deep silence in the Life of the same Saint written by an anonymous author about the middle of the ninth century and published in our work at the 3rd day of September. The same silence is observed by two other biographers of the same Saint, Notger and Heriger. For which cause Mabillon on the Life of St. Bercharius and our Veldius in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Remaclus have already rightly observed that it is very uncertain whether St. Remaclus in fact bore that office in the royal court. Moreover, whoever surveys the Commentary composed by Veldius will easily perceive that this Saint always stayed in Neustria, and mostly, if not always, in the city of Bourges, until, after his laudable government of the monastery of Solignac, he was called to the court by Sigibert II, king of Austrasia, that by his prudence, says the Anonymous of Stavelot Vol. I of September, p. 693, no. 2, the affairs of the kingdom might be ordered; which accordingly did not happen before the year 638, in which Sigibert began to reign. It is altogether improbable, therefore, that St. Bercharius had St. Remaclus as master about the year 628, both because he was scarcely born, as we saw above, and because St. Nivard would not have handed over a youth of the best hope to a stranger, namely a Neustrian. Let the preceptor of our Saint, therefore, have been some Remaclus (this we shall easily admit on account of Adso's testimony), provided he is determined to be altogether different from the holy bishop of Maastricht.

[31] Then under Walbert Meanwhile, says Adso at no. 6, when the just youth had enjoyed for some time the mastership of the blessed man (Remaclus), and had tasted according to his strength the draught of heavenly wisdom, he set his heart on seeking the monastery of Luxeuil … Bercharius, therefore, the servant of Christ, desiring always to ascend to the institutes of a higher life, hastens with swift step, by the authority and favour of his pontiff, to this place according to his vow, is approved as worthy by the alacrity of the aforesaid father (namely Eustasius, of whom Adso had already spoken), is joined to the holy cohort of monks not so much in body as in mind and act. In this narrative a chronological error crept upon Adso; namely when he sets the beginning of St. Bercharius's monkhood under the government of St. Eustasius, abbot of Luxeuil after St. Columbanus. For it is established that St. Eustasius died in the year 625, as may be seen in his Life at the 29th day of March [Vol. III of March, p. 790. Compare Mabillon, Acta SS. O. S. B., second century, p. 123], at which time, as we have already said, Bercharius was scarcely a little boy. For if Bercharius had professed the monastic life at Luxeuil under St. Eustasius, it would be necessary, first, that he had gone to St. Nivard long before his episcopate, and then that he had persevered at Luxeuil for about 25 years; but neither agrees with the chronology. St. Waldebert or Walbert, therefore, is to be substituted for St. Eustasius, who governed Luxeuil for 40 years, and under whose leadership and mastership our Saint ran the course of the monastic life. Le Cointe indeed does not admit this error of Adso, but thinks that Bercharius was in fact inscribed by St. Eustasius in the roll of the monks of Luxeuil; namely because he believed that he had used the mastership of St. Remaclus at the royal court much earlier, that is, about the year 624. But since that, as is clear from what has been said above, is by no means probable, I do not see how Adso can be excused from error.

[32] at Luxeuil How much he advanced in holiness of life and regular observance may be gathered from the Life, nos. 7 and 8, where his illustrious virtues, and especially obedience, are adorned with remarkable, though more general, encomiums; which obedience also God, if we believe the biographer, willed to declare by a quite illustrious miracle, which I reduce thus into a compendium from the Life in the place cited: Bercharius, being in charge of the storeroom, when he was drawing beer into a vessel to be served to the brethren, it happened that he was suddenly called by the abbot; obeying the abbot's command without delay, he left the storeroom without closing the spigot, and went to the abbot; returning then, he wondered that none of the beer had flowed down onto the ground, but that it had remained raised above the jar like a column. Mabillon Acta SS. O. B., second century, p. 16 observes the same miracle in the Life of St. Columbanus written by Jonas, and on that account speaks thus in his annotations to the Life of St. Bercharius: It (the narrated miracle) cannot be fitted to Bercharius: since it is said to have been done at the command of Columbanus, whom Bercharius, being nearly contemporary, could not have seen. But that miracle could have happened twice, first indeed under Abbot Columbanus, and again under Waldebert; and so on account of the reason adduced by Mabillon the miracle cannot certainly be rejected. The said miracle, however, is suspect for another cause: Adso, two centuries removed from the age of St. Bercharius, relates the miracle not from ancient records but, as his words insinuate, from tradition alone, which is often a very untrustworthy guide in the marks of persons and times: therefore the authority of Adso also is not sufficient for us to judge that the same miracle happened twice in the same monastery: I should easily believe that Adso wrongly transferred to St. Bercharius what is narrated as done under St. Columbanus.

[33] he lives as a monk. Besides the said miracle, which, as is clear from what has been said, is very suspect, the biographer does not explain what the Saint did in particular in the monastery of Luxeuil; and he is silent as to how long he stayed in that same monastery. Concerning that time, however, two things are clear: namely, both that he had already returned to Reims before the year 662, in which Hautvillers, as will be shown below, was founded; and that he lived a long time at Luxeuil, as Adso has it at no. 9; which, however, the beginning of St. Nivard's pontificate urges should be confined within eight or ten years. And the reason why our Saint left the monastery of Luxeuil, without doubt with the good leave of his abbot, and returned to Reims, was certainly that St. Nivard wished to use the work of the same man, whom he had already before held as his familiar, in founding the monastery he was planning, and to set him over it as abbot: nor would it be absurd to think that our Saint was directed to Luxeuil by Blessed Nivard on this condition, that, afterwards returning to Reims, the discipline drawn

from the exercise of very many years he might propagate in the new monastery.

§ III. The monasteries of Hautvillers, of the Maidens, and of Der founded by St. Bercharius.

St. Bercharius founds the monastery of Hautvillers St. Bercharius founded three principal monasteries: namely Hautvillers in the bishopric of Reims, the monastery of the Maidens for women, and that of Der for monks, both in the forest of Der, whence also the name is derived. Now the forest of Der was situated on the borders of the dioceses of Châlons and Troyes. As regards the monastery of Hautvillers, there is no reason for us to linger longer in explaining its origins, since they have been described at length in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Nivard Vol. I of September, §4, p. 272 and in the Life of St. Bercharius to be published below: lest, therefore, we do what has been done, we do not wish to reprint them here. Let it suffice here to explain the variances occurring between Adso and Flodoard concerning the foundation of the said monastery, which our Stilting more probably put off to be discussed at the Life of St. Bercharius. The first difficulty that occurs arises from this, that Adso at no. 9 says that the place in which Hautvillers was founded was of St. Nivard's right; but Flodoard [Hist. Rem. Eccl., book I, chapter 7. Bibliotheca maxima Patrum, vol. XVII, p. 536] says that the said place belonged to the brothers Bavo and Theodoramnus; but that they handed over that same possession to St. Nivard by an exchange received from him: as is established also from a fragment of the charter of donation Gallia Christiana, vol. X, Instruments, col. 1. But the narrative of both is true, Adso indicating indeed the last possessor, Flodoard also the preceding ones.

[35] Flodoard also differs from the biographer in that the latter relates that the vision of the dove, the monastery, which afforded the occasion of building the monastery, happened on St. Nivard's journey towards Épernay: but the former on his return from Épernay to Reims. He differs likewise in that the biographer names none of the first disciples of our Saint who put on the monastic habit in the monastery of Hautvillers: but Flodoard reviews three by name in these words Bibliotheca maxima Patrum, vol. XVII, p. 536: Where (at Hautvillers) the aforesaid Theodoramnus also is made a monk. And Reolus also asked that his son, named Gideon, begotten of a niece of St. Nivard, be made a monk there, and gave part of his goods to the same monastery. And the Blessed Nivard, the monastery being established, handed over to that place whatever possessions he had been seen to have before his episcopate, and, exhorting the Blessed Reolus (count of Champagne and successor of St. Nivard in the episcopate), persuaded him to take the habit of religion. Almann speaks in the same way as Flodoard in the Life of St. Nivard: but since the words of neither, as our Stilting observes Vol. I of September, p. 274, no. 27, and p. 283, note d, absolutely require that he was in fact made a monk, they easily admit this sense, that St. Reolus put on only the clerical garb, since in his Life cited by Stilting it is said that, formed by the salutary admonitions of St. Nivard, he took the clerical tonsure; for the rest, this question can perhaps be discussed more maturely when his Acts are published at the 25th day of November.

[36] probably But the difference which most of all is to be noted between the narrative of the two is this, that the biographer wraps in silence certain things which Flodoard in the place cited relates preceded the structure of the same monastery: Blessed Nivard, he says, when by the common consent of the whole council of the prelates of Gaul, held at Nantes by the command of the Roman Pontiff, the king favouring, he had rebuilt the church of a monastery formerly situated on the bank of the river Marne in the place called Villare, but destroyed by the Barbarians, and this church constructed by him had fallen from its foundations, rebuilt by him again in another place, it is related to have collapsed again. These things our biographer probably omitted because they preceded the return of St. Bercharius from the monastery of Luxeuil. From a misunderstood place of Flodoard there might perhaps be someone who could suspect that the monastery of Hautvillers was founded by St. Bercharius a little after the council of Nantes, which Sirmond Concilia Galliae, vol. I, col. 495 and Labbe Vol. VI of the Councils, col. 486 determine was celebrated in the year 658, but Longueval Histoire de l'Église gallicane, vol. IV, p. 7 in the year 650. For Longueval thinks that that council was convened in order to satisfy the commands of St. Martin, Pope, the first: for the Pontiff had prescribed, in the letter to St. Amandus by which he sends the acts of the Lateran synod celebrated in the month of October of the year 649 Labbe, vol. VI of the Councils, col. 383, these commands: That, a synodal assembly of all our brethren and fellow-bishops of those parts being effected, according to the tenor of the encyclical sent by us, they should together celebrate writings to be sent to ourselves with your subscriptions, and consenting to those things which have been decreed by us for the orthodox faith and the destruction of the madness of the heretics lately arisen. Further, this synod of Nantes fits rightly enough with the letter of St. Martin, so that it seems to be set in the year 650 or the following.

[37] about the year 662 If anyone, therefore, connects the beginning of Bercharius's foundation at Hautvillers with the council of Nantes, he must refer the origin of the said monastery to the year 658, or more probably to the year 650: of which error indeed D. Bouquet accuses Mabillon Recueil des Historiens de France, vol. III, p. 588, in a note. Nowhere, however, have I found this opinion which he attributes to Mabillon: in the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti Book XV, §23, vol. I, p. 429 he arranges the foundation of Hautvillers about the year 662: and in the Acta Sanctorum of the same Order he determines no time. But since that most learned man knew from the Acts of St. Bercharius, no. 17, that the monastery was founded with the clemency of Childeric, king of the Franks, assisting, it was surely certain to him that the work could not have been begun before the year 660, in which Childeric II began to reign. The time, therefore, of the monastery of Hautvillers founded by St. Bercharius is to be determined between this year, on account of King Childeric, and the year 673, on account of the death of St. Nivard. Our Stilting Vol. I of September, p. 272, no. 21 places the beginnings of Hautvillers about the end of St. Nivard's episcopate; but since St. Bercharius without doubt spent some years in building and ruling the said monastery, and since he then built Der about the year 672, St. Nivard still surviving, the beginnings of Hautvillers are to be referred rather to the middle than to the end of St. Nivard's episcopate.

[38] long before the death of St. Nivard. There is one thing, however, which could urge that Hautvillers was built about the end of St. Nivard's episcopate; namely, Adso subjoins the death of the holy bishop to the founding of the monastery, whence Pagi concludes Critica Baronii at the year 662, §5 that a short interval of time intervened between the two events. But Der was not built, as Adso has it at no. 20, before the affairs, both outer and inner, of the aforesaid monastery of Hautvillers had been honourably ordered according to the worship of God; then, says the biographer, he sought out places opportune for himself for the sake of gaining souls. Stilting, however, tries to free Adso from error when he says Vol. I of September, p. 276, no. 33: Adso indeed narrated the death of Nivard before he spoke of the foundation of Der, but nowhere asserted that Nivard died before the said foundation. I for my part believe that Adso truly erred here and placed the time of St. Nivard's death when the foundation of Hautvillers was still unfinished: for a little after, treating of the same monastery, he says: Which, although it was destitute of the comfort of so great a father, yet by no means desisting from the intention of the work begun, etc. Further, below at no. 50 we shall show that St. Nivard survived many years. Rightly, therefore, most of the more recent chronologists judge that the foundation of Hautvillers is to be placed about the year 662; since it cannot be set much earlier on account of the beginnings of King Childeric II, nor much later on account of the subsequent foundations of St. Bercharius, which he did not begin until Hautvillers was well established and its discipline duly settled, as the words of Adso adduced above prove.

[39] Then in Der A step must now be made by us to the other foundations of the holy man made in the forest of Der. Now the forest of Der, as I have already said, was on the border between the dioceses of Châlons and Troyes: but today, at least as regards the part of the territory in which the monasteries of Der and of the Maidens are situated, it belongs to the bishopric of Langres and to the prefecture of the Upper Marne (Département de la Haute-Marne). The first monastery indeed which he founded in the forest of Der was for women: whence it received the name of the monastery of the Maidens (in French Puellemontier). Its foundation Adso relates in the following words at no. 20: Going out thence (from the monastery of Hautvillers), the gift of God going before, he strove to seek the vast solitude of the forest of Der: in which place, not unmindful of the intention with which he had come, he searched anxiously, keeping watch, for a state suitable for building a monastery. While thinking of these things, then, the grace of God guiding, he betook himself to a certain matron named Walthild; who, ennobled with proud blood, rejoiced in the abundance of very many estates from her forefathers: from whom the holy man bought for himself, by the gift of an agreed price, part of the forest, namely the place which is commonly called Mangisvillare: and there, building a little cell and consecrating it to the honour of Blessed Mary, he gathered most diligently, as far as was possible, a company of maidens to serve God and his Mother… From this, therefore, the help of Christ assisting, the number of virgins grew up to a total of sixty, over whom also the aforesaid father solemnly set as abbess a niece of the above-written matron Walthild.

[40] of the Maidens That the monastery of the Maidens was the first which St. Bercharius founded in the forest of Der is clear from the fact that the biographer, passing to the other foundations of the Saint, says: These things also being duly accomplished; which words altogether indicate that the remaining constructions in Der followed this monastery of virgins. These the biographer proceeds to describe thus: These things also being duly accomplished, searching untiringly the more secret parts of the forest, he longed exceedingly to learn whether he could find anywhere places more opportune for building little cells; coming to a certain place named Lutosae, reckoning it suitable for building a cell, he strove with excessive solicitude to fulfil his wishes. Thinking, then, that this was by no means to be undertaken by his own strength, he went to him in whose power this estate was. For at that time King Childeric, governing the kingdom of the Franks most nobly, most gladly acquiesced in the petitions of the holy man. To him, therefore, the excellent father went, and, with the bishops Leodegar and Mummulenus, men partners with him in good wishes, fervent in the love of God, and also the nobles Amalric and Wlfaud, he obtained from the king leave to build for himself in that same place a basilica, which he consecrated in honour of St. Martin; the aforesaid King Childeric kindly gave one league of the forest all round from the church.

[41] and of the Men, That after the basilica of St. Martin had been built other cells were erected the words of the same biographer show: But Blessed Bercharius, not content even with these, founded for himself a little cell near the place which is called Puteolus, in that part which is now called Monasteriolum, in honour of Blessed Maurice, hoping that he had found a place suitable for building a monastery. But when

this too did not seem suitable to him, he dedicated a certain church above the river

Voire in honour of St. Sulpicius.

Nor, judging that even there the site would be fit for a monastery,

with ever-watchful mind, like a wise architect,

did he cease to ask Him who shows Himself present to those who seek Him to grant places

suited to his wishes. Behold the various attempts by which

our Bercharius sought to found a monastery fit for himself and his own:

the earlier ones had displeased him, and therefore he searches out a

more favourable place. John Mabillon, indeed,

Annals, at the year 672, book XVI, § XVIII, vol. I, p. 469. thinks that all these were rather added to the principal monastery

afterwards: so that he suspects that Adso inverted

the chronological order. Certainly,

if Bercharius had built the little cells of St. Martin, St. Maurice and St. Sulpicius

as priories or

appendages of some more principal monastery, no

doubt would remain that the greater monastery of Der had come first;

but from the whole context we gather

above all that the various cells were certain beginnings of the principal

monastery, but that, since those places for reasons unknown to us

did not please him, various stations were sought out by the Saint,

until at length he found that of Der.

If therefore the foundations of the Saint narrated above were afterwards added to the principal

house of Der, this happened not so much

from some preconceived intention as from the event that followed.

Next, Adso, whom alone we are able to follow as an author in these

foundations, plainly

indicates that he meant to proceed in chronological order in

recounting the Saint's foundations: from whom therefore we

may not depart, until records are brought forward which

prove the contrary.

[42] after various attempts, From Adso's words, therefore, it must plainly be concluded

that with the foundation of the monastery of Der the holy

man in some manner set the crowning touch upon his labours:

which Adso's words sufficiently indicate, when he says:

At a certain time, therefore, when the divine clemency

no longer willed the mind of its servant to be drawn hither and thither,

it granted, by signs going before, that a place suited to his wishes

should be found. These things certainly confirm

what we said above about the various attempts by which

St. Bercharius endeavoured to find a place fit for building a monastery:

which at first indeed he did not find,

but afterwards, God so disposing, he chose one most fitting for himself,

as the biographer clearly narrates at no. 23: For

as he was going through the hidden parts of the forest, he came by chance to a certain place,

where he found swineherds: whom

he addressed courteously, and, presenting them with the gift of a gold

coin, asked to be shown what places, more suitable

for dwelling, they had at some time observed while going about the forests,

saying that it was his intention, in a fitting

place for dwelling, by rooting up the forests, to mark out the tents of cenobites:

that he had indeed tried various places,

but had found in no place at all dwellings in which he could securely remain.

The swineherds then relate that there is a certain place

in the woodland, distinguished by a heavenly portent. After which Adso

continues:

[43] he founds at length There therefore Bl. Bercharius, the forests having been rooted out

with much labour, chose the site for building a monastery.

Thence he proceeds to the palace, and, the king's favour having been obtained,

from whose desire he was doing these things, by St. Leodegar

the bishop, and Almaric the mayor of the palace, by Fulcoald

also and Wlfaud, by Nivard too and Atelanus

the bishops, he obtained that there be given him from the king's fisc a forest

which is called Vassiacus, round about the aforesaid place,

as by royal authority it is held marked out:

whence he might be able to have the means and estates for establishing

the monastery… Whence the Lord

Bercharius himself built a church to be consecrated to God in honour of the Holy Apostles

Peter and Paul, which

from the aforesaid place he called Puteolus. To anyone who considers this whole

narrative it becomes evident that Adso followed

the chronological order of the foundations

of St. Bercharius: and accordingly that all those monasteries were built

before the time at which Childeric II gave

his diploma for the monastery of men at Der, that is,

before the third year of his reign.

[44] the principal Among the papers left by my predecessor concerning St. Bechario,

and found after this preliminary commentary had been composed,

an opinion contrary to Adso's narrative is set down,

and it is propped up by two arguments.

The first is that St. Bercharius before all else established the principal

monastery of Hautvillers, and then added

the oratories and little cells of St. John the Baptist and

of the Blessed Virgin Mary: whence he concludes that even on this ground Mabillon's

opinion, by which he judges the smaller cells to have been afterwards added

to the more principal monastery,

seems wholly to be embraced. For my part I would gladly embrace

Mabillon's opinion, if Adso's words

sounded at all confused; but the biographer marks the order

of time too accurately for me to dare, on account of a certain analogy,

to depart from his chronology;

and that above all since Adso brings forward an effective reason

why Bercharius began not from some chief

monastery but from certain cells, as

I showed in the preceding numbers. Nor does it help to object

against Adso that he, having so often slipped, is not to be believed:

the biographer could easily err about the infancy of St.

Bercharius and the things he did at Reims, the narrative of which

rested on tradition; but it is altogether another matter when

he treats of the foundation of Der; for without

doubt he had before him more certain records by which

he could establish belief.

[45] monastery; The other argument by which my predecessor attempts to prove

that Adso inverted the historical order

is that it is in no way likely that St. Bercharius

built all the aforesaid sacred buildings

before he had obtained from King Childeric the estate on which to found the more principal

monastery of Der;

and yet this must be said to have happened, if one wishes to stand by

the order of narration established by Adso. But I do not

believe that I am reduced to straits of this kind: for

the very charter of Childeric presupposes that not all the estate

was royal, and therefore some cells could have been built on private

land. Certainly the monastery of the Maidens

did not belong to the king, but to a noble matron, as

we saw at num. 39, Walthildis by name,

from whom, a price having been paid, St. Bercharius bought part of the forest.

Next, the donation of Childeric is twofold; the first, on the testimony

of Adso cited above at no. 40, precedes the foundations of the cells,

and was granted on the counsel of Leodegar

and Mummolenus the bishops, and of Amalric also and

Wlfaud the nobles: the other donation concerns the principal

monastery of Der, which alone survives today,

and has as witnesses, Mummolinus being omitted, those praised above,

and besides Nivard and Atelanus the bishops

and Fulcoald the noble, as Adso has it, cited

above at no. 43. There were therefore two diplomas of Childeric II,

of which the later has come down to us. Both

Adso certainly had in his archive; whence his narrative

too is confirmed, and therefore the opinion

which I have embraced.

[46] the time of whose foundation These matters being settled, there remains another, and that no small,

difficulty concerning the year in which the principal monastery of Der,

called Puteolus, was begun: because some

wish Childeric's years to be counted from the kingdom of Austrasia, that is, from the year

660, others from the monarchy of all France obtained, that is,

from the year 670 or the following. The former

opinion is embraced by Bréquigny Chronological Table of Diplomas, vol. I, p. 63., Dom

Bouquet Collection of the Historians of France, vol. IV, p. 645. and Pagi Critique of Baronius at the year 663, § VII.; whose reasons we shall afterwards

weigh. The latter is followed by John

Mabillon [Annals, book XVI, § XVII, vol. I, p. 468. Compare, however, what the same author has in the Acts of the Saints, saec. II, p. 841, note a.], Le Cointe Annals of the Franks at the year 671, § IX, vol. III, p. 634., and Adrien Baillet in

the Life of St. Bercharius. Before all else let us bring forward the Childerician

diploma itself from the Gallia Christiana Vol. X, Instruments, col. 147., collated with the copy

of Nicolas Camuzat Promptuarium of the Antiquities of Troyes, fol. 79.:

both because it serves admirably to confirm the biographer's statements,

and also to determine, what chiefly concerns us here,

the time of the founding of the monastery of Der:

The loftiness of royal clemency ought always to assent to the petitions of religious

men, especially of those who bear the zeal of ecclesiastical care,

so that it may with kindly

affection come to the help of those who perform divine worship, and bestow the aid of its devotion,

that their prayer may succour us before the Lord's clemency,

and may continually intercede for the peace and stability of our

kingdom. Wherefore we order it to come to the knowledge

of all, that the venerable and religious abbot

Bercharius approached our serenity,

beseeching that we grant him

a certain place in the forest of Der and in the boundary of Vuaciacum,

in which it might be lawful for him to build a monastery,

and that we give means and estates by which

he might fulfil what would befit the monastery or the places of the cells,

and might set up a congregation of monks

there.

[47] a twofold diploma The supplication of the eminent man therefore pleased our reverence,

and what he had requested we granted him:

who, building a monastery above the river Voire

in honour of the Blessed Peter and Paul and of the other

Saints, asked our highness that, for the firmness of the

whole matter, we should grant an entire immunity concerning the

monastery itself. We therefore, advanced by heavenly

favour, with the consent of our bishops and nobles,

lending our ear to the prayers of so great a man,

order that concerning all the property of that

monastery, both what I myself have assigned there,

and also what is known to have been donated by other Christian men,

and what at present in

whatever places and territories, whether from its inheritance

or by its effort, they are seen to possess, both beyond the Loire, namely in Herla and

Saturiacum, or Domnofrons with their appurtenances,

and also on this side of the Loire, or

what may hereafter in God's name be justly and reasonably added or donated there by Christian

men, for the quiet of our

kingdom itself we grant an entire immunity out of reverence for that

holy place, so that no public judge,

girded in any manner with judicial power, shall presume to enter

the courts of that monastery, wherever at present

their possession or lordship may remain, or what

hereafter, as we have said, may be added or donated,

neither for hearing cases, nor for taking

sureties, nor for exacting * freda, nor for making

lodgings, nor for extorting rotaticum * within cities or in markets,

nor to exact any paratae *, or any

requisitions whatever; but in

all the property of that monastery, as has been said above,

in all places and territories where they are seen to possess anything,

without the interdict of judges, all claims on the part of the fisc

being removed and cut off,

as far as above the bank of the little river Magnens, the boundary proceeding

in a straight line to the place which is called Deep

Valley, under the name of immunity

they may unshakeably, both in our and in future times,

hold lordship or possess, that so it may come about that for us

there may be reward for the benefit bestowed, and that

it may the better delight the servants of God themselves, dwelling in that monastery,

to entreat the Lord's mercy more attentively for the stability of our kingdom.

[48] of Childeric II And that this immunity may be held the firmer and

be preserved through the ages, we have decreed that it be confirmed below

with the subscriptions of our hand and of our faithful ones,

both bishops and nobles.

Sign of Reolus the bishop. Sign of Leodegar the bishop.

Sign of Atleanus the bishop. Sign of Wlfaud the mayor of the palace. Sign

of Almaric. Given on the fourth day before the Nones of July, in the third year of the reign of King

Childeric. Done at the palace of Compiègne. Before

we approach the solution of the chronological question of the year

of the diploma's issue, some points to be observed come up.

First, in that part of the forest of Der

which King Childeric professes in this diploma to have given to St. Bercharius, was situated the place called Puteolus (in French Puisie), which according to Adso our Saint obtained from the same king, and where he built the principal basilica, consecrated under the title of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and the monastery itself; and for that reason the monastery of Der is called Puteolus in the letters of donation of St. Bercharius himself, to be recited below, and in the diploma of Theoderic III, king of Neustria, who, after the death of his brother Childeric, aspired to Austrasia Dom Bouquet, vol. IV, p. 662..

[49] and that of St. Bercharius himself is set forth; Toward the elucidation of the Childerician diploma the letters of donation of St. Bercharius, of which we made mention above, contribute not a little, and besides they notably illustrate what we taught in § II concerning the Saint's homeland, parents and riches. Wherefore we here transcribe them entire from the Promptuarium of Nicolas Camuzat Fol. 81.: I Bercharius, in the name of Christ abbot. This, in the name of God, can pertain to the remedy of our soul, when something has been donated with good will to the places of the Saints; and therefore by this letter of donation to the monastery whose name is Puteolus, above the river Voire, which we built by our own labour, by the donation and with the help of kings, I give there from the present day our inheritance in the estate of Diseium beyond the Loire, above the river Crete, with its appurtenances, that is, whatever I am seen to have in Cavannae, in Saviniacum, in Balgiacum, in Britellum, in Musciacum, in Bissiacum, in Crisceium, in Cassiniacum, in Abloniacum, where there is a chapel in honour of St. Anianus, in Gravisium, in Laminiacum, in Nuhileium, in Luceium, in Sacron, in Virgiolum, in Sorgenium, in Vergenium, in Aliacum, in Montiniacum, in Cartal and Ferziacum, all which, named above, came to us by law from paternal and maternal succession, both lands and houses, buildings, and the bondsmen dwelling there, which at the present time we are seen to hold, the whole entirely; so that I will that all these things set out above be in the demesne of the aforesaid monastery, that there it may profit for ever in increase, and that the monks who serve there day and night ought to make entreaty for my sins and those of the kings and of the whole people. And if anyone (which we do not believe will happen) of our heirs or co-heirs shall attempt to rise up against this letter of donation, first let him lack his own life, and with his stock captive … and as Sodom and Gomorrah were struck in the present age, so likewise let his power and dwelling be struck… Done at the city of Reims, on the third day before the Kalends of September (30 August), in the presence of the Lord and glorious King Childeric, in the fourth year of his reign. Sign of Nivard the archbishop. S[ign] of Leodegar bishop of Autun. S[ign] of Mummolenus bishop of Noyon. S[ign] of Hermar the abbot. S[ign] of Hilduin the abbot. S[ign] of Bercharius the abbot, who ordered this charter of donation to be made.

[50] and first the subscriptions of both Concerning each of these monuments of antiquity, namely the Childerician diploma and the Bercharian donation, a twofold question now arises: the first, whether the subscriptions with which each charter is furnished are genuine; the other, to what year of the Christian era these two letters are to be referred. Pagi Critique of Baronius at the year 663, § VIII. does not hold the subscriptions of the Childerician diploma genuine, since he contends that among the bishops subscribed to the Bercharian letters St. Nivard is wrongly read, whom he supposes to have been substituted by some interpolator in place of Reolus. On the contrary Le Cointe At the year 671, § XIII, vol. III, p. 637. and Mabillon Benedictine Annals, book XVI, § XVII, vol. I, p. 468. say that St. Nivard is rightly subscribed to the letters of Bercharius, and that in the diploma of Childeric the name of Reolus is wrongly set down in place of the sign of Nivard. And to prove their opinion, both Le Cointe and Mabillon, as well as Pagi, have recourse to the Acts of our Saint. Pagi therefore contends that St. Nivard died before the foundation of the monastery of Der, and before the foundation of Hautvillers, which he thinks was begun in the year 662, had been completed; because our biographer narrates his death at that point; and so St. Nivard could not have subscribed to a diploma given after his death. Le Cointe and Mabillon, however, contend that St. Nivard was still alive and surviving when the monastery of Der was founded. And not without reason; for this is urged both by the Bercharian letters, later than the diploma of Childeric, to which Nivard is read as subscribed, and by the very clear words of the biographer Adso, who says at no. 24: that with the help of… Nivard (beyond doubt of Reims, as we shall show below) and Atelanus the bishops, he (Bercharius) obtained that a forest be given him from the royal fisc.

[51] the subscriptions of the diploma, That Pagi moreover has confined the life of St. Nivard within too narrow limits is clear from the diploma of Drauscio, or Drausius, bishop of Soissons, given in the year 666 for the convent of maidens of the same city, to which Nivo or Nivard is read as subscribed Michel Germain, History of the Abbey of Notre-Dame of Soissons, p. 421.. It is likewise clear from a fragment of the Life of St. Lantbert, published by our men at the 14th day of April Vol. II of April, p. 217, no. 3., that St. Nivard was still alive in the eleventh year of King (Childeric II) in Austria, which had been the first in Neustria, that is, in the year of Christ 671: and since the diploma of Childeric transcribed above was granted, as we shall presently see, not long after this year, it becomes very likely that Nivard is rightly reckoned by our biographer among those by whose favour with the king our Saint obtained that diploma, and therefore that his name is to be restored among the subscribing bishops in place of Reolus; and this the more, since beyond doubt Adso, abbot of Der, had before him the original diploma of Childeric, from which he took the names of the patrons. Yet to defend his opinion Pagi replies that the Nivard subscribed to the diploma of Drauscio, mentioned in the fragment of the Life of St. Lantbert, and finally reckoned by our biographer among the patrons of St. Bercharius with the king, is to be distinguished from St. Nivard or Nivo, bishop of Reims, and was bishop of some unknown see in Gaul. If this were so, it could not but seem strange that no city in Gaul has hitherto been found which claims among the bishops of its see this Nivard, distinct from the one of Reims and known from so many ancient monuments. Moreover, how did it come about that that Nivard whom the biographer names among the helpers is not found subscribed, when all the rest who are read as intercessors with Childeric for St. Bercharius appear to have confirmed the diploma with their name? How likewise did it come about that Reolus now appears subscribed to the diploma, of whom the biographer makes no mention? Truly it seems to me to have come about for no other reason that Nivard disappeared from among the subscribing bishops and Reolus was substituted for him, than that that interpolator thought that the matter there really concerned Nivard of Reims, whose successor he therefore names, Reolus.

[52] next the year It is therefore very probable that the name of Reolus crept wrongly into the Childerician diploma, unless it be said that Reolus could have subscribed for Nivard by vicarious power Compare vol. I of September, p. 274, no. 33., and that in the Bercharian letters the name of Nivard of Reims is rightly read as subscribed, without, however, the title of archbishop, added by some interpolator, having to be approved; for it is commonly known that that word was indeed known in the Gauls about the middle of the 7th century, but was nevertheless not used by the bishops themselves before the 8th or 9th century. That the fourth year of Childeric is likewise wrongly expressed in the letters of St. Bercharius will become plain from what we shall bring forward concerning the other question, which must now be discussed, namely in what year the letters of Childeric II and of St. Bercharius were given. A twofold epoch of the reign begun by Childeric II is found in use: one begins from the time at which he was made king of Austrasia alone by St. Bathildis his mother; the other from his entry, after the death of Clothar III and the deposition and tonsuring of Theoderic III, into the possession of Neustria and Burgundy. Accordingly, in order to know with what year of the Christian era the third year of King Childeric, when the diploma was given, must be made to agree, one must know not only from which of the two epochs Childeric's third year is to be begun, but also at what time the same Childeric began to reign, first in Austrasia, then in Neustria and Burgundy. This twofold beginning of the reign was laboriously investigated by our Cornelius De Bye in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of SS. Leodegar and Gerinus Vol. I of October, § VIII, p. 381., and he proved that Childeric began to reign in Austrasia in the year 660; and then in Neustria and Burgundy, Theoderic III, who held both kingdoms for some months after Clothar III, who died toward the end of the year 669 or at the beginning of the following, having been thrown from the throne, he began to reign in the year 670, when it had advanced to the month of October.

[53] of each diploma are discussed: From what has been said it follows that the oft-mentioned diploma of Childeric was given either in the year 662 or 672, according as it is counted from the one or the other beginning of the reign. That the later epoch is designated, that is, that the diploma was given when Childeric was already in his third year governing all France, is the view of Le Cointe At the year 671, § IX, vol. III, p. 634. and Mabillon Annals, book XVI, § XVII, vol. I, p. 468., who place the foundation under the year 672; and their opinion was deservedly embraced among our predecessors by Stilting in the Commentary on St. Nivard Vol. I of September, p. 275, no. 32. and by De Bye Vol. I of October, p. 384, no. 122. in the Commentary on SS. Leodegar and Gerinus. For the said diploma of Childeric is noted as given at the palace of Compiègne: and it is commonly known that that palace was situated in Neustria, and that the Neustrian kings for the most part resided there Adrien de Valois, Notitia of Gaul.. It is established also that Mummolinus, subscribed to the letters of St. Bercharius, was bishop of Noyon in the same Neustria, and Leodegar, who strengthened each monument with his subscription, bishop of Autun in Burgundy: and it is in no way likely that bishops from the kingdoms of Burgundy and Neustria subscribed to the said charters, or that the royal diploma of Childeric could have been given in the palace of the Neustrian kings, before Childeric was lord of Neustria and Burgundy: truly, says Le Cointe in the place cited, there is no need of other arguments than those drawn from the place of the diploma's issue and the sees of the subscribing bishops for you to understand that the years of King Childeric are counted not from the day on which he first began to be lord of Austria, but from the day on which he called himself monarch of all France, his brother Theoderic, king of the Burgundians and Neustrians, having been deposed.

[54] Pagi is refuted, To these arguments brought by Le Cointe, however, Pagi does not wish to subscribe, who Critique of Baronius at the year 663, § XI. defends the opposite opinion and strives to prove by various reasons,

that each of the aforesaid charters was given when Childeric reigned in Austrasia alone. Pagi lays the chief foundation of his opinion in the letters of St. Bercharius, and from these argues to the said year thus: The later charter, given on the third day before the Kalends of September in the fourth year of the reign of Childeric, drove Le Cointe astray, and was the cause why he assigned the death of King Sigebert to the year 654, the death of Clovis II and the beginning of Clothar III, his son, to the year 655, the death of the same Clothar and the beginning of the monarchy of Childeric II to the year 669, and so disturbed the chronology of the Franks not a little: for if he had counted the monarchy of Childeric II from the year 670, in which he really obtained it and succeeded his brother Clothar, his fourth year, joined with the third day before the Kalends of September, in the later charter would have fallen in the year of Christ 673, in which year and month, however, Childeric had perhaps already been slain, or at which time Le Cointe admits that Leodegar was shut up in the monastery of Luxeuil. Since therefore Le Cointe was persuaded that that charter was given in the fourth year of Childeric as monarch, and indeed at the end of August, and that Childeric was slain in the year 673, which last is most true, he could not but anticipate the death of Clothar III, Clovis II and Sigebert; into which, and other inconveniences too, whoever will have it that the said precept of Childeric and the donation of Bercharius was issued while he reigned in Neustria and Burgundy will fall, like him, willing or unwilling. So Pagi, accusing Le Cointe of various errors in chronology; and he contends that the letters of donation of St. Bercharius, and so also the royal diploma of Childeric, which was issued before them, are to be referred back to that time at which Childeric reigned in Austrasia alone, chiefly on two heads, namely from the time of the exile of St. Leodegar and of the slaying of Childeric.

[55] who refers the Childerician It is not indeed to be doubted that Pagi rightly noted various chronological errors in Le Cointe: but nevertheless our men demonstrate in the Preliminary Commentary on St. Leodegar Vol. I of October, p. 381, § VIII. that it can conveniently, and without danger of those errors into which Le Cointe fell, be established that the diploma of Childeric and the letters of St. Bercharius were given at the time when Childeric reigned not only in Austrasia but also in Neustria and Burgundy. In this, however, Pagi is right, that he will not admit in the letters of St. Bercharius the subscribed name of St. Leodegar joined with the third day before the Kalends of September of the fourth year of Childeric's monarchy: for at that time the said St. Leodegar was living as an exile in the monastery of Luxeuil: accordingly either these letters are to be referred back to the fourth year of Childeric reigning in Austrasia alone, that is, to the year 663, or it must be said that some error crept into them. And in fact an error of this kind crept in through the carelessness of copyists, who, looking with too little attentive an eye at the autograph which they had in their hands, written anno III regni ejus, with the last unit almost joining the middle one below, wrote down the fourth year of the reign; and therefore I am persuaded that, unless this error of the copyists be admitted, the chronological characters expressed in the Bercharian letters must necessarily, on account of the exile of St. Leodegar, be referred to Childeric as king in Austrasia alone: but this is forbidden by the sees of the subscribing bishops, situated outside Austrasia, and by the extreme improbability which lies in this, that St. Bercharius in the year 663, that is, nine years before obtaining the royal privilege, conferred all his goods upon the monastery of Der, which in all likelihood was not yet built, as we saw above. And to refer the Childerician diploma itself, with Pagi, back to the same time is not permitted by the place where the diploma was given, Compiègne, situated in Neustria, and by the very words of Childeric: That this immunity may be held the firmer and be preserved through the ages, we have decreed that it be strengthened below with the subscriptions of our hand and of our faithful ones, both bishops and nobles. For by the name of faithful ones Childeric designates his subjects, among whom he could not have counted Leodegar if, when he issued that diploma, he had held the kingdom of Austrasia alone.

[56] diploma The said Pagi indeed replies that Childeric's words are to be taken in such a way that by the name of faithful ones, or subjects, the other bishops and nobles subscribed to the diploma are understood, but by no means Leodegar the Burgundian. For what, he says in the place cited, prevented Childeric, who had come into Neustria to see his brother Clothar, or for some other cause unknown to us, from being able to give goods belonging to his fisc, and to employ whom he would as witnesses; for this matter is not one of lordship, but a right common even to private persons. The manner of speaking of Childeric, to which Le Cointe did not turn his mind, presses more: for he says: "And that this immunity may be held the firmer, we have decreed that it be confirmed below with the subscriptions of our hand and of our faithful ones, both bishops and nobles." For by the name of faithful ones vassals and subjects are designated, such as Leodegar was not. But King Childeric does not comprehend under the name of faithful ones Leodegar, the subject of his brother Clothar, but Reolus bishop of Reims, Attelanus bishop of Laon, Wlfaud mayor of the palace of Austria, and Amalric, one of his nobles. These things are indeed conveniently said by Pagi, but can be proved with more difficulty. For nothing is brought forward by which the answer may in any way be propped up. Childeric could have visited his brother: this indeed is possible, but in no way probable. For this journey of Childeric into Neustria, devised by Pagi, when he was in his third year in the kingdom of Austrasia and scarcely in the tenth or eleventh of his age, is far from likelihood. The Austrasians could deservedly fear, if they allowed their king, so young, to leave the kingdom and set out into Neustria, lest they lose him for ever, and Austrasia be again joined with Neustria and Burgundy under the rule of Clothar alone, which they most abhorred, and so new commotions of wars also be stirred up; to calm which Queen St. Bathildis had not long before been compelled to tear the Austrasians away from the dominions of Clothar, and to grant them King Childeric, to be lord of Austrasia alone Dom Bouquet, vol. III, p. 690..

[57] to the year 662; To this is added an argument taken from Pagi himself: he cites Critique of Baronius at the year 661, § VI. two diplomas undoubtedly issued by Childeric while he was still reigning in Austrasia alone; namely the charter of donation of the estate of Barisiacum made to St. Amandus, which is noted as given in the second year of the reign of our lord King Childeric, that is, in the year of Christ 661 or 662, and another precept of the same king for the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy, given in the eighth year of the reign of the lord King Childeric; and at the beginning of each diploma the name of King Childeric and of Queen Hymnichildis is set first and repeated in the subscription: and Pagi rightly observes that this was done for this reason, that Hymnichildis, widow of King St. Sigebert, held the guardianship of her nephew Childeric, scarcely eight years old when he was brought to the kingdom of Austrasia, until he should reach a sufficient maturity of age. Now if the third year marked in the transcribed diploma of Der were to be referred to Childeric as king in Austrasia alone, this diploma, just like the two others just praised, would have been given at the time when Hymnichildis was governing Austrasia for her nephew, and mention of Queen Hymnichildis ought surely to have been made at the beginning and end of the same diploma: since this was not done, it is at least a probable indication that the said diploma belongs to those times in which Childeric, of full age, ruled the whole monarchy of France.

[58] which seems rather to belong to the year 672. But what Pagi says, that Leodegar does not come under the name of the faithful ones who recur in the diploma, is a bare assertion in no way probable: Childeric uses a general word, both for the bishops and for the nobles: to wish to detract from this generality is not so much to fit a chronological question to the facts as to twist any facts whatever to some preconceived opinion. Pagi says next that the diploma given by Childeric is not a matter of lordship but a right common even to private persons. The donation of part of a forest indeed did not exceed the right belonging to any private person; but besides the fact that various things had been donated to Der by various persons, both beyond and on this side of the Loire, Childeric also granted, for the quiet of his kingdom and out of reverence for that holy place, that no public judge, girded in any manner with judicial power, should exercise any jurisdiction in the courts of that monastery, wherever at present their possession may remain. This exemption from public judges is certainly a matter of lordship: since therefore lordship was exercised even beyond the Loire in Aquitaine, which belonged to Burgundy, it follows that that diploma was granted after Childeric had begun to be at the head of the whole Frankish monarchy. To this can be added that the grant of the place called Lutosa, which John Mabillon assigns to the diocese of Troyes [Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, saec. II, p. 840. In the notes to the Life of St. Bercharius.], but the Topographical Lexicon of France, by d'Expilly, to that of Langres, was made before the foundation of Der, as we showed above at no. 41 and following: and here again SS. Leodegar and Mummolinus recur, the latter a Neustrian, the former a Burgundian: indeed, since the dioceses both of Troyes and of Langres belonged, outside Austrasia, to Burgundy, it follows that at the time of the donation of Lutosa Childeric had already obtained all France.

[59] seems to belong. As a crowning touch let there be the very impossibility that St. Bercharius founded the monastery of Der in the third year of Childeric reigning in Austrasia, that is, in the year of Christ 662 or 663: for, as Pagi himself admits Critique of Baronius at the year 662, § VI., the foundation of Hautvillers is rightly attached to this year, and from Adso, no. 20, we have that our Saint did not begin other foundations until the affairs, both outward and inward, of the aforesaid monastery of Hautvillers had been honourably ordered according to the worship of God; all which could scarcely be completed within the space of a year: then are added the foundations of the monastery of the Maidens, of the cells at Lutosa, at Monasteriolum and of St. Sulpicius, which, together with the construction of the principal monastery of Hautvillers, would have to be crammed within the narrow limits of a single year, in order that the diploma of Der of the third year of Childeric in Austrasia might be referred to the year of the Christian era 662 or 663. Nor does the ancient catalogue of the abbots of Der [Library of Cluny, note of André Du Chesne on the letters of Peter the Venerable, p. 114.] support Pagi, in which it is said that St. Bercharius in the year 664 received a gift and privilege from Childeric, king of the Franks, and died after twenty-one years: for the Catalogue by no means says that that privilege was granted to the monks of Der: indeed, besides the reasons brought above, the narrative of Adso, which at no. 17 shows us Childeric beneficent toward the monks of Hautvillers, persuades us that it rather pertains to Hautvillers. But as to what Pagi Critique of Baronius at the year 662, § XI. says, that from this chronology many inconveniences arise, as if the death-year of the kings Clothar III, Clovis II and Sigebert would have to be placed earlier,

this has been abundantly and solidly refuted by our men in the Preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Leodegar Vol. I of October, p. 381, § VIII.: whence nothing on that matter needs to be repeated here. It remains therefore, to say nothing in exaggeration, most probable that the diploma of Childeric was given at the palace of Compiègne on the fourth day before the Nones of July, in the third year of his reign, and accordingly that the beginnings of the monastery of Der belong to the year 672.

* procurations

* toll

* fines

§ IV. Bercharius enriches the monastery of Der with various Relics of the Saints: pilgrimages undertaken for that reason to Jerusalem and to Rome.

St. Bercharius at Jerusalem St. Bercharius not only conferred a great many temporal possessions upon the monastery of Der, and doubtless provided sufficiently for the sustenance of the nuns of the monastery of the Maidens, whether from his own goods or from the donations of other faithful; but not the least care was his also to enrich each monastery founded by him with sacred pledges of the Blessed. For that reason, as the biographer narrates at no. 28, our Saint went on pilgrimage once indeed to Jerusalem, but many times to Rome, and brought back from there very many Relics of the Saints; without, however, the said biographer explaining of which Saints they were. Among these holy treasures brought to the monastery of Der, however, the body of St. Theodosia is expressly reckoned by a manuscript codex of the same monastery, praised by John Mabillon in his Annotations to the Life of the Saint Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, saec. II, 841., in which is read: In the year of the Incarnate Word 1108, epact 17, on the Ides of September, in the same year in which King Philip died and his son was anointed king, by the Lord Rotger the abbot, in the 11th year of his ordination, there was placed in this shrine the body of St. Theodosia, Virgin, who for the name of Christ suffered many torments, even to the cutting off of her head, at Caesarea in Palestine: her, however, St. Bercharius the abbot brought from that same city, with the Relics of many Saints, and fittingly placed in this monastery, which he had built by royal gift.

[61] is said to have brought back the body of St. Theodosia: Mention of the same St. Theodosia, as also of St. Bercharius, as resting at Der, is made in a diploma in John Mabillon Benedictine Annals, vol. II, Appendix LXVIII, p. 696., which was given in the fourth year of the reign of the most excellent King Charles the Bald, that is, of Christ 845, and in two other later diplomas of the same king Ibid., vol. III, Appendix III and IV, p. 619 and following.: and so du Saussay is undoubtedly mistaken who, at the 2nd day of April, in the eulogy of St. Theodosia, writes that her remains were brought partly to the diocese of Liège, partly to the monastery of Der, in the time of Bishop Notger, since from what has been said it is clear that the body of the same Saint, or rather part of it (for our Henschenius, in the preliminary observations to her Life Vol. I of April, p. 62, no. 12., not improbably supposed that the other part was at some time carried to Constantinople), already from the year 845 at least, and therefore a whole century before Notger, who sat from the year 972 to 1007, began to govern the church of Liège, rested in the monastery of Der. But in the diploma of Louis the Pious shown by Mabillon Benedictine Annals, vol. II, Appendix LIV, p. 687. it is said that the body of St. Bercharius rests in the same monastery, no mention being made of the body of St. Theodosia, perhaps because at that time it had not yet been translated thither; and in the Martyrology of Der, whose words Nicolas Camuzat recites after the passion of St. Bercharius Promptuarium of the Antiquities of Troyes, fol. 112., this body is not said to have been translated by St. Bercharius but by the brethren of this place. Wherefore, just as the translation of this sacred body is not to be denied to St. Bercharius on every count, on account of the assertions of the cited codex of Der, so also there is not sufficient reason for it to be ascribed to him undoubtingly: for the authority of the said codex alone, inasmuch as it was not written before the year 1108, and therefore more than four centuries after our Saint's death, is somewhat weak, unless it be supported by a perpetual tradition, of which there is no certainty.

[62] it is inquired whether as companion Another circumstance besides of the pilgrimage which the Saint, according to the biographer, undertook into Palestine is related by the writer of the Miracles at no. 14; namely that St. Bercharius, going to Jerusalem, is said to have taken with him Waimer, guilty of the torments of St. Leodegar. If this is consonant with the truth, it cannot but redound to the highest praise of the holy man that he laboured so greatly for the conversion of this sinner. But since the writer is three centuries later than our Bercharius, and since he learned of Waimer's pilgrimage not so much from approved monuments as from some popular little rumour, as the cited words sufficiently indicate, it is surely to be feared that this whole narrative should be held certain by all on his authority alone. There is one thing that could build up the credibility of the narrative, namely that our Saint seems to have been involved in the affairs of St. Leodegar. For Walthildis, from whom Bercharius bought the estate of the monastery of the Maidens, is said to be the wife of Waimer in the charter of Bertoendus, bishop of Châlons, to be recited below: then in the Life of St. Leodegar written by a contemporary anonymous author Vol. I of October, p. 466, no. 17. it is read that through a certain monk named Bertharius (others read Bercharius) news of his death was announced to him (St. Leodegar).

[63] of his journey he had John Mabillon, in his preliminary observations to the Life of St. Bercharius Saec. II, p. 831., leaves this question in suspense and permits it to the reader's judgment. Since, however, the anonymous biographer of St. Leodegar attributes the warning to Bercharius the monk, he does not seem to have meant to indicate our abbot; for as often as he speaks of Ermenarius, Meroald, Berto and other rulers of monasteries, he never omits the title of abbot; and he would accordingly have done so too if he had named our Bercharius, who was certainly celebrated and in favour with King Childeric. I judge, therefore, that another Bertharius or Bercharius is here indicated, especially since that name was common enough in that century, as can be seen in the Onomastic Index at the end of the volumes of Dom Bouquet. By a similar reply the argument drawn from Waimer, husband of Walthildis, can be struck down: nothing certainly prevents several from having borne that name: and hence perhaps arose the hallucination of the writer of the Miracles of St. Bercharius, which, as we said before, has no other surety than a popular rumour.

[64] Waimer, persecutor Indeed the writer's opinion would have to be rejected altogether if there were certainty about the legitimate reading of the contemporary Life of St. Leodegar, in which it is expressly related that Waimer, persecutor of the holy prelate, died impenitent. But that reading does not seem in every respect sound, whether we consider the text itself or its circumstances. Here are the words Vol. I of October, p. 475, no. 45.: For Waimer, who had been a companion of destruction in seizing the aforesaid servant of God (Leodegar) and in carrying out the orders of Ebroin, after he had been raised by guile by Ebroin himself to the rank of the episcopate (of Troyes) because he had consented to his vengeance, after a little interval had passed, falling into disfavour, was, by God's will as we suppose, crushed by many scourges: namely, as it is said, he sent him to Tartarus hanged by a noose and condemned to a most shameful death, as befitted the betrayer of a just man. It is certainly strange that a contemporary writer, and, as our men show Ibid., p. 361, no. 24., to be ranked at least with an eyewitness, did not know for certain with what kind of punishment Waimer was afflicted, and rather, bringing in mention of the noose, followed some vague rumour. Against the genuineness of the text is the fact that it is missing in most manuscript codices, as our men note at this place, which they had to supply from Du Chesne.

[65] of St. Leodegar. The repetition of the same text in another contemporary Life, written by Ursinus, in which it recurs expressed word for word Vol. I of October, p. 489, no. 18., also makes it suspect: yet in other narratives Ursinus, while following the Anonymous, by no means shows himself servile, and although the facts agree, yet the words and style differ. Finally the Anonymous seems to contradict himself: for the man whom he relates to have died impenitent, he had a little before asserted to have become an upright man at the persuasion of St. Leodegar Ibid., p. 471, no. 36.: After the long fasting from hunger, he says, which the martyr of God endured, Waimer, recalling that human nature could not so endure in him unless the grace of Christ sustained him, orders him to be brought into his house: for his hard bowels began to be softened. For when he had grown accustomed to him in familiar converse, he so tamed his fierceness in a short space of time, and converted both him and his wife to the fear of God, that he devoutly offered him the silver of the church which he had lately received for the ransom of the city of Autun, and granted whatever he should decide to do with it. Since indeed these words show Waimer as married, and we know that the same man was a bishop not only from the place cited above but also from the contemporary Life of St. Praejectus, at the 25th of January Vol. II of January, p. 632, no. 12., his wife, after the custom of those times, taking the habit. Although these things are so, I do not, however, believe them sufficient for me to affirm that Waimer, persecutor of St. Leodegar, was the same as Waimer, companion of St. Bercharius on pilgrimage.

[66] A convent of maidens is begun at Gaugiacum, As almost the crowning touch of the deeds of St. Bercharius, John Mabillon Vol. I of the Annals, Appendix XXX, p. 644. shows a charter of Reolus, bishop of Reims, given at the estate of Compiègne on the day of the Kalends of May, in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Theoderic (III), that is, in the year of Christ 683 or 686, according as the years of Theoderic are counted from the death of Clothar III, which was in the year 670, or from his deliverance from the monastery of Saint-Denis, which happened three years later: the former we call the more certain, since St. Bercharius died in the 85th year of the same century, as we shall show below. From this diploma it is clear that our Saint, besides the monastery of Der and the monastery of the Maidens, wished moreover to found another monastery of virgins, and for this purpose obtained from the same Reolus a place from the property of the church… of Reims, below the city of the Catalauni, in the district of Perthois, above the river Marne, in the estate which is called Gaugiacus, or by another name, which is called Episcopi-villa. But, as Mabillon Annals, book XVII, § XLIII, vol. I, p. 351. and the Authors of the Gallia Christiana Vol. IX, col. 904. observe, in a very old paper codex the monks of Der are said to have at Gogiacum one demesne holding with arable land for sowing thirty modii, and with a vineyard where three modii of wine can be gathered, no mention being made of a monastery; there is likewise a similar silence about the same convent in other ancient monuments: wherefore the said authors judge that St. Bercharius could not carry out this last purpose of his, inasmuch as, before he set his hand to the work, he was probably taken from the midst by a violent death.

§ V. The death of St. Bercharius.

It is shown first of all Now we must come to the various circumstances of the death of St. Bercharius. And first of all we have seen that the Roman Martyrology and others call our Saint a Martyr, a title which, however, the Parisian and the Auxerre Martyrologies omit, without indicating any reason for such omission. Prospero Lambertini [On the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants of God, book III, chap. XI, no. 1.] defines martyrdom, according to the common opinion of theologians, as: The voluntary suffering or endurance of death for the faith of Christ or for another act of virtue referred to God. In martyrdom, therefore, two persons must intervene, that is, the persecutor and the Martyr. And it is easy to demonstrate that these marks of martyrdom concurred in the slaying of St. Bercharius. First of all, it shines out from the whole narrative that death was inflicted by a persecutor and accepted by the holy man, and at the same time had as its cause an act of virtue referred to God. While he was ordering many things, then, says Adso, it happened by chance that he decided that his little son, whom he had received from the sacred font and had determined should be a monk, Daguinus by name, should, his faults requiring it, be struck with the lash of rebuke, as is the custom. For this man, as afterwards became clear, most wicked and shameful, with a polished brow, was hiding under a sheep's skin the trappings of a ravening beast. And so, in desert of his iniquity, delivered over to the devil with Judas the traitor, bearing with indignation the instructive reproofs of his father, the manly bile swelling under his breast, the madman strove to deliver the holy man to an unjust death. At length, when the blessed father, not a little wearied by the day's labour of anxiety, had reclined on his bed together with the brethren and given his limbs to sleep, since he who reproves the guilty incurs hatred, that same son of Satan, armed with the weapons of impiety, after he believed him weary and asleep, rushing upon him, assailed him with a mortal wound. St. Bercharius therefore underwent death because as abbot he rebuked his monk by reason of his office, and because he tried to lead back one who had strayed to the path of religion and holiness: which is surely nothing other than to exercise an act of virtue referred to God.

[68] that St. Bercharius can truly be called a Martyr: It is strange, therefore, that the Parisian and Auxerre Martyrologies, by omitting the title of Martyr, have as it were denied it to him: since one can be a Martyr as much for the faith of things to be done as for the faith of things to be believed, as the Angelic Doctor proves II-II, Question CXXIV, art. V.: Martyrs, he says, are so called as being witnesses, because, namely, by their bodily sufferings even unto death they bear testimony to the truth, not to any truth whatever, but to the truth which is according to godliness, which has been made known to us through Christ. Whence also they are called Martyrs as being His witnesses. Now of this kind is the truth of the faith, and therefore the cause of any martyrdom is the truth of the faith. But to the truth of the faith pertains not only the very belief of the heart, but also the outward profession, which indeed is made not only by words, by which one confesses the faith, but also by deeds, by which one shows that he has the faith, according to that of James II: I will show thee my faith by my works. Whence also it is said of certain men, to Titus I: They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny Him. And therefore the works of all the virtues, according as they are referred to God, are certain professions of the faith, through which it becomes known to us that God requires such works of us and rewards us for them; and according to this they can be a cause of martyrdom. Whence also the martyrdom of Blessed John the Baptist is celebrated in the Church, who underwent death not for refusing to deny the faith, but for the reproof of adultery. Fittingly to our matter the holy Doctor adds the example of Bl. John the Baptist, whom both Breviaries, the Parisian and that of Auxerre, call a Martyr: the former, in the prayer for the feast of the beheading on the 29th day of August, asks of God that, as he fell a Martyr of truth and justice, so we may strive for truth and justice even unto death. That of Auxerre, however: O God, to whose truth the forerunner of thy Son bore testimony by shedding his blood; grant us, etc. St. John the Baptist is indeed said to have shed his blood for the truth, which, however, is to be so understood that he endured death for a right deed, which has its root in truth and doctrine. But this same thing can be said of our Saint Bercharius: whence no fit reason appears why the title of Martyr should be denied him: there are present on the contrary most weighty considerations which make this glory his own.

[69] a twofold narrative being set out The biographer Adso describes the slaying of St. Bercharius at length; but a fragment which John Mabillon Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, saec. II, p. 843. adds as an appendix to the Adsonian Life differs from his narrative. Since therefore no small difference lies between the two, it will be worth while to bring both forward. Adso, then, narrates this: When therefore such great contests of labours had been run through in a course of this kind for the prize of the heavenly life, and the Lord was already disposing to give His labourer a worthy reward, He granted him beforehand to know the impending time of his bodily dissolution. For, the paschal solemnity being now at hand, on the fifth weekday, on which the Lord's Supper was held, the solicitous father of the flock committed to him devoutly went to the monastery of the maidens, to fulfil the precepts of the Lord after the custom of the faithful. Among many words of exhortation, then, and addresses of consolation, he foretold to them this also, which had been divinely made known to him concerning the dissolution of his own body… And when all had been performed with psalms and hymns, he set out on the way back to the monastery… He then narrates how, having returned, he received that same night a deadly wound from Daguinus, who himself, terrified at his crime, began to ring the bell. And the brethren, when they heard the bell at an unaccustomed hour, rising in great astonishment, and hearing that the holy man had been slain, ran to his bed: but they found the spirit still wavering in him with anguish. He relates further how Daguinus, brought to St. Bercharius, obtained pardon, and went to Rome to obtain absolution for the crime: then he continues the narrative: But Blessed Bercharius, sick for a very long time with the anguish of the wound, at length released from the flesh, happily sought with exulting spirit the joys of the heavenly life. And at the death of so great a man, religious men flocking together from every side, he was buried in a certain place outside the monastery, etc.

[70] of the slaying inflicted; So Adso: but the manuscript of Der, a fragment of which John Mabillon brings forward at the end of the Life of St. Bercharius, sets out the matter otherwise in the following words: Blessed Bercharius, sick with the languor of a most grievous wound, although, drawing sighs, he could scarcely speak, yet with weary breath, humbly ordering the solemnities of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection, and also the rites of his own burial and the place of his sepulture, foretold to his disciples many things to come: enjoining upon them the solicitude of divine fear and the observance of holy religion. At length, being about to go to meet the triumphant Lord with the palm of victory, on the morning of the Sunday of His own most holy Resurrection from the dead, released from the flesh, he happily sought with exulting spirit the joys of the heavenly life. And at the death of so great a man, religious men flocking together from every side, he was buried, as he had ordered, in a certain place outside the church, flourishing there, by God's gift, in many effects of miracles.

[71] the Saint is shown to have died after two days To anyone who considers both texts even lightly it becomes manifest that the one served the other, since many things are set out in both with the same tenor of words. But which is to be preferred does not seem doubtful. For that of Der is far more likely, and more consistent with the circumstances set out in each manuscript. Both agree in this, that on the night of the fifth weekday, at the Lord's Supper, St. Bercharius was struck with a mortal wound by Daguinus the monk, so that the other monks thought he had already been slain; but they found the spirit still wavering in him with anguish. These words clearly show that such a wound was inflicted on the holy man that death followed very soon from it. Whence the former reading cannot be approved, which says that Bercharius was sick for a very long time with the languor of the wound. Someone will perhaps think that the bad reading can easily be cured by changing the word diutissime into durissimi, and that it is well known that errors of this kind creep into a text through the yawning of scribes: but what prevents us from ascribing this error merely to a careless copyist is what follows in the corrupt text: that at length he was released from the flesh; by which it is surely insinuated that a fairly long interval passed between the receiving of the wound and death. The text therefore seems altogether corrupt in all the Adsonian copies which we have seen; and the one drawn from the codex of Der seems to be preferred.

[72] on the 26th of March, And this all the more, because, as Nicolas Camuzat testifies in the Promptuarium of Troyes Fol. 86 verso., in another copy of Adso, brought into his hands after the Life had been printed, St. Bercharius is related to have departed this life on the day on which the solemnity of the rising Christ is celebrated, in the year 685. John Mabillon, from the same manuscript codex from which he extracted the fragment cited above, brings forward another, which runs thus: This Blessed Father Bercharius died the last day of his life in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord DCXXCV, Indiction XIII, epact XI, on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, on the morning of the Lord's Resurrection. Which chronological characters, he says, do not agree, unless you read the seventh day before the Kalends of April, on which Easter fell in the year 685. By all these is the fragment of Der cited above admirably confirmed, namely that our Saint survived his wound scarcely two days, and accordingly that it is wrongly read in Adso, as most copies show him, that Bercharius, sick for a very long time with the anguish of the wound, at length released from the flesh, sought the joys of the heavenly life. It remains therefore unshaken that the Saint exchanged his mortal life for the immortal on the feast of the Lord's Resurrection.

[73] in the year 685, notwithstanding The day of the death of St. Bercharius being established, we must come to a somewhat more laborious question, namely in what year he died his last day. From the monuments brought forward above it is established that many referred the martyrdom of St. Bercharius to the year of Christ 685, among whom is to be reckoned the author of the ancient catalogue of the abbots of Der, preserved for us by André Du Chesne Notes on the Letters of Peter the Venerable, p. 114, in the Library of Cluny., in which is read: St. Bercharius, abbot of the monastery of Der, in the year of the Lord six hundred and sixty-four, received a gift and privilege from Childeric, king of the Franks. After twenty-one years, St. Bercharius being translated from this world, Synaulius the abbot succeeded, in the year of the Incarnate Word 650 and 30 and 5, in the time of Theoderic, brother of Childeric. I do not doubt that all would agree in this opinion, were it not opposed by the diploma of Bertoendus, bishop of Châlons, granted to the monks of Der, at the end of which is read: Done publicly at Reims, given on the 15th day which the month of February made, in the second year of our glorious Lord King Clovis. Clovis III, king of Neustria, of whom it is here a question, began to reign in the year 691, at the beginning of spring: accordingly the 15th day of February of the second year falls in the year 92 or the following of the same century, according as Clovis came to the kingdom before or after the 15th of February.

[74] the diploma Since therefore in the cited diploma it is said of St. Bercharius: Where (in the monastery of Blessed Peter and Paul

of Der) he himself is seen to preside as abbot; and since moreover he himself is related to have asked for the privilege; it follows that the death of St. Bercharius cannot be placed earlier than the year 692 or the following. Indeed, since it was established from other monuments that he departed this life on the seventh day before the Kalends of April (26 March) on the day of Easter, his martyrdom had to be put off to the year 696, marked with the dominical letters B A, Easter Sunday falling on the 26th of March. There would be nothing to make me oppose this opinion, which Adrien Baillet and Alban Butler approved by their reckoning at the 16th of October, were not the authenticity of the diploma highly suspect to me. For, the truth of the privilege of Châlons being admitted, we have a solemn, contemporary testimony by which it is invincibly demonstrated that our Saint survived at least to the 92nd year of the seventh century: the remaining monuments, inasmuch as they are more recent, which indicate the 85th year of the same century, would accordingly be of little account. But, as I have said, the diploma is suspect and uncertain, and therefore weak for establishing anything: that this may shine out more clearly, we set it before the reader, with the various readings which occur in the copy published by the academician de Bréquigny noted in the margin.

[75] of Bertoendus, bishop of Châlons, [It is extant in the Spicilegium of Luc d'Achery, vol. III, p. 317, and in Bréquigny, Diplomata, etc., vol. I, p. 326.] To the holy Lords, presiding over the watch-towers of the highest summit of the Apostolic Pontifical chair, brethren in Christ or fellow bishops, Rigobert the metropolitan [For the sees of these prelates see the Acts of the Saints, 29 September, p. 164, no. 28.], Basinus, Stephen, Adalbert, Alo, Madalgarius , I, though unworthy in rank, yet bishop of the Catalauni, send greeting as a suppliant in the Lord. Although the decrees of the ancient rule teach us both what must be kept perpetually and that the customs of the fathers are to be preserved undiminished, yet we also, decreeing regularly upon these things, wish with most willing mind to devote our affection to the wishes of suppliants, and especially of those shining with orthodox faith, treating their petitions with such provision. Since therefore the glorious lord King Clovis and the illustrious man Pippin, mayor of the palace, are known, out of religious solicitude, to have plainly asked of us that we should confer a privilege upon the monastery of Puteoli in the wastes of Der, in honour of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of St. John the Baptist, and of St. John the Evangelist, and also of all the Saints, built by the most religious man St. Bercharius, where he himself is seen to preside as abbot, out of the munificence of the late King Childeric; and also upon another monastery of maidens above the river Voire, and also Dria in Der, in the boundary of Flaciniacum, which Waimer and his wife Waltidis , and the Lord Bercharius the abbot built together. In which place the consecrated Waltidis is seen at the present time to be the mother of many virgins, and they have joined themselves with them in the bands of a manifold gathering, with equal zeal of pious devotion, in the praises of God; moved by one Spirit of the rule through heavenly inspiration, she renders pious service in singing praises to almighty God. Assenting to which salutarily, know that we have with willing mind granted this privilege, which they asked with full devotion, to be kept by perpetual authority. For the authority of granting a privilege is not new either for those who ask or for those who grant it, since surely all the prelates of the Apostolic See in times past, whence sacred authority is propagated, have always ordained that requests should be granted not only to those established in neighbouring provinces but also in the other regions situated far away. Wherefore I beseech the lord bishops, successors of the aforesaid Church, and abundantly and more I presume to adjure, nay to conjure them, by the omnipotence of the immense Trinity, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that they bid the commended aforenamed monastery to be loved with pious minds, bid it be cherished, bid it be maintained, bid it be preserved. And lest the succeeding brotherhood of priests should think that we have decreed this in * these regions by the prompting of our own deliberation or by a new invention; since under the rule of this constitution the place of the Saints of Agaunum, nay and the monastery of Lérins, and the monastery of Luxeuil, and many other monasteries, and also the basilica of the Lord Marcellus, and innumerable monasteries in the parts of the East, are preserved in their own privileges by decree of bishops. Therefore with one consent of agreement, by the will of God, weighing the religion of the aforesaid Fathers, it has thus been decreed by all, that neither we nor our successors shall have any lordship over the above-written monasteries of men or of maiden virgins, where they are gathered, which the aforesaid man Bercharius and Waimer and also his wife Waltidis are known to have built together for the salvation of their souls: so that it may be more freely permitted them, with God's help, without the hindrance of any matter, to live the contemplative life. And when the father of the monastery shall have been called from the world, whomsoever the whole congregation of those servants of God shall unanimously have chosen, from wherever, as best versed in the rule, him let them appoint as their senior and abbot: and likewise, when the mother of the virgins shall have been called from the world, whomsoever the whole congregation of those handmaids of Christ shall unanimously have chosen, from wherever, as best versed in the rule, her let them establish as their senior mother and abbess together with the counsel of the monks, the brethren of Der; and if it be needful for them to have an abbot blessed, or chrism consecrated, or to receive sacred orders, this only we reserve to ourselves without any disturbance, on account of the canonical institution and the right of our Church.

[76] which is set forth, by the diploma: But for the rest, as is contained above, neither we nor the archdeacon, nor our successors, nor any person whatever ought to have any power or lordship, or dare to presume or take away any cause concerning the same monastery or its little cells , parishes or other monasteries. And if the congregation itself shall have acted lukewarmly in anything concerning their religion according to the rule of St. Benedict or of the lord Columban, let them be corrected by their abbot or abbess, who for the time shall be the spiritual father or mother. For let no pontifical right be held by us or by our successors in the same monastery for the cause of covetousness or (which God forbid) of avarice; but let them enjoy their own privilege in the name of God. For concerning the aforesaid things, conferred by the builders of that holy monastery for the sustenance of the aforesaid holy monks , the maiden virgins, both food and clothing, or hereafter to be conferred by other God-fearing persons, or granted by the royal power, let no power whatever be held by bishops or by any persons of alienating or diminishing anything of this, but let it rest in the judgment or dispensation of the mothers or fathers of the same monastery, and their provosts , for governing, ruling and dispensing. For this reason also we have granted the privilege, because nothing of canonical authority is overthrown by whatever is granted, for the quiet of tranquillity, to those of the household of faith and especially to those leading the contemplative life. But if anyone, overtaken by craft or covetousness, shall have dared with rash spirit to violate the things comprehended above, laid low by divine vengeance, let him be subject to the guilt of anathema, and let the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian come upon him, and let him be made excommunicate from the holy Catholic Church. And nonetheless let this privilege remain uncorrupted for perpetual times. Which constitution of ours, that it may stand for firm times, has been strengthened by the subscriptions of our hand. And that it may be more fully confirmed, we have besides sent it to the other brethren and fellow bishops who were not present, to be strengthened. Done publicly at Reims, given on the 15th day which the month of February made, in the second year of our glorious Lord King Clovis.

[77] which is interpolated, as to its contents There are not a few things, as I said before, which make the diploma of Bertoendus uncertain and suspect. First of all our Bercharius, though living, is called Saint, which title for the most part implies death: I will not say plainly that this title is always fitted to the dead alone, so that it was never put upon the living; but I do not believe it is easily to be granted that in a solemn diploma, to be subscribed by various bishops, such a title was given to someone living. Let it then have been wrongly added by the fault of a copyist: this at least will follow, that the diploma has not come down to us genuine in every part: and if it has been corrupted in some part, who will be able to pledge his faith for the truth of the remaining things narrated? Next, that Bertoendus's charter is not consistent with itself, or that a great discrepancy exists between the various copies, is shown by the index of titles of the cartulary of Der Antiquities of Troyes, fol. 82., as it is shown by Nicolas Camuzat: Privilege given by Bertoendus, bishop of Châlons, at the request of King Clovis of illustrious memory and of Pippin, mayor of the royal palace, in which the same bishop gives us the election of the abbot and the abbess, both in our monastery and in the monastery of the Maidens, who also earlier gave us in our estate and in others round about every kind of jurisdiction, retaining nothing to himself except the blessing of the abbot and the abbess (of the blessing of the abbess nothing is said in the cited diploma), the making of chrism, the conferring of orders, and the penitentials. The penitential, of which we are here speaking, is interpreted by the Supplement of Du Cange's Glossary as the right of appointing penitentiaries or of imposing penance: and it adds as an example a charter of Guido, bishop of Châlons, of the year 1183, from the archive of Der: Moreover we have retained to ourselves the chrism, the Penitentials, and the holy synod, to which the abbot, if he has been summoned, must come for all his clerics. Now by no word are Penitentials of this kind touched upon in the charter of Bertoendus: hence it is certainly clear that a discrepancy exists between the various copies; which takes away all authenticity.

[78] and the name of Bercharius seems: Indeed, if faith is to be had in the ancient catalogue cited above at num. 73 Library of Cluny, Notes to book I, letter of Peter the Venerable, p. 114., the diploma of Châlons is read as given not to St. Bercharius but to his successor Synaulius, in these words: In the year of the Incarnate Word 693 … immunity and privilege were given to Abbot Synaulius by Berthoendus, bishop of Châlons, at the request of King Childebert, brother of Theoderic. Here the writer is hallucinating; in that year not Childebert but Clovis reigned, each, however, not a brother but a son of Theoderic III. But if it be admitted that Synaulius received the diploma, the opinion which I establish concerning the death of St. Bercharius in the year 685 is confirmed. And these things indeed make the document uncertain, and show that those rest on too weak a foundation who on its account prolong our Saint's life to the year 696, making little of testimonies which, though they are not contemporary, nevertheless seem to have their root in the domestic tradition which always flourished in the monastery of Der.

[79] next Bertoendus usurps a right These things indeed would suffice to refute the opinion opposed to us; but one fault remains which shows the diploma to be in great part interpolated. Bertoendus, namely, grants to the nuns of the monastery which Walthildis had built, and which was called the monastery of the Maidens, that when the mother of the Virgins shall have been called from the world, whomsoever the whole congregation of those handmaids of Christ shall unanimously have chosen, from wherever, … her let them establish as their senior mother and abbess, together with the counsel of the monks, the brethren of Der. One thing, however, besides the blessing of the abbot and the ordination of clerics, which pertain rather to monasteries of men, the bishop reserves to himself on account of the canonical institution and the right of his church, namely the making of chrism. Who, while he reads this, will not persuade himself that each monastery, both of men and of maidens,

is contained within the boundaries of one and the same diocese? Yet the matter stands otherwise. The monastery of the Maidens of Der belongs to the bishopric of Troyes Gallia Christiana, vol. XII, col. 533., as all agree, and as is manifestly proved by the charter of Frotmund, who occupied the see of Troyes from the year 998 to 1034 Ibid., col. 494.. I recite the words of the charter Camuzat, Antiquities of Troyes, fol. 84.:

[80] of the bishop of Troyes, In the name of the Holy and undivided Trinity, Father and S[on] and H[oly] Spirit. I, the humble Frotmund, bishop of Augusta of the Tricasses, as the great and almighty King Himself has disposed, desire it to be known to those present and to come, that the venerable abbot Bruno, from the monastery of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of St. Bercharius the Martyr, came to us, beseeching our gentleness that we should grant freedom to a certain altar which is in the estate called the monastery of the Maidens. And that altar is in honour of the holy and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of God, where formerly there had been a congregation of very many virgins, in whose place he has determined that monks are to be set under the yoke of the abbot of the aforesaid place, and for that reason he chiefly asks for freedom, that no disquiet may be able to trouble those serving God there. His petition, therefore, since we believed it to be pleasing to God, we have thought it worthy to accept, and what he asked, with the consent of our faithful clerics and laymen, we have willingly granted, and we have rendered that church with its altar free from every custom or requisition, saving, however, the pontifical ordination, on this condition, that every year, on the feast of All Saints, they pay two solidi to me and my successors. Done publicly at the city of the Tricasses, on the day before the Kalends of May, Henry reigning as king of the Franks.

[81] although Le Cointe says These things being laid down, it does not appear how Bertoendus, bishop of Châlons, could have granted freedom to a monastery which belonged neither to his diocese nor to the province of Reims itself. It would be pleaded in vain that this was done on the counsel of his brethren the fellow bishops, as is said in the diploma: the difficulty remains: for the consent is lacking of him who ought to have been sought before all others, namely the bishop of Troyes. At that time Aldobert presided over this church, whose name does not occur at the head of the diploma of Châlons; and rightly indeed, since it is judged to have been given in a Council of the province of Reims; but Troyes belonged to that of Sens: Le Cointe indeed says Annals of the Franks at the year 694, § III, vol. IV, who had seen a summary of the privilege, not the letters themselves: There may be room for the question how Bertoendus reserved to himself the blessing both of the abbot in his own bishopric and of the abbess in another's diocese: we have already said that the privilege does not treat of the blessing of the abbess, but that Bertoendus reserves various things to himself; hence there is room for the question, which Le Cointe solves thus: Beyond doubt the consent of the bishop of Troyes was added. A similar example has already occurred in the monasteries of Malmedy and Stavelot, which, with the assent of Bishop Cunibert, were dedicated by one and the same Remaclus, bishop of Maastricht, although Malmedy belonged to the diocese of Cologne, Stavelot to that of Maastricht. Concerning which matter Notger says thus in the Life of St. Remaclus The Anonymous has the same, vol. I of September, p. 695, no. 11.: "The king, since the newly built churches needed episcopal blessing, summoning Blessed Remaclus, wished both that one which was of the parish of Cologne, with the assent of the venerable Bishop Cunibert, and that which is of our diocese, to be solemnly consecrated by him."

[82] that this was done with the permission of the bishop of Troyes, I for my part cannot approve by my reckoning what Le Cointe brings forward to explain the privilege of Châlons. For, to pass over that in a most weighty and extraordinary matter it seems necessary that the exception itself should be expressed in the diploma, namely that the consent of the bishop of Troyes was added to it, the example brought by Le Cointe in no way squares with the case expressed by the privilege. For the monastery of Malmedy the consent of the diocesan bishop is expressed, even in a simple narrative; while on the contrary not even by a word is mention made of the bishop of Troyes in authentic letters, which, as is well enough known, are accustomed to follow all the fine points of law. And what is the head of the question, in the deed of St. Remaclus it is a matter of the consecration of a church, namely of a single act to be performed once, to which, if the consent of the proper bishop be added, nothing at all is lost to his jurisdiction. But the case in the diploma of Bertoendus is far otherwise: namely, a monastery belonging to another is subjected in perpetuity to the Church of Châlons: and we know that that kind of alienation is most rare, and was not lawful according to the discipline flourishing in the 7th century, except with the deliberation and consent of the whole clergy Chap. LII, cause XII, q. II.: indeed it is established from the diploma of Frotmund cited at no. 80 that nothing was alienated from the church of Troyes.

[83] or that the matter concerns the convent One thing perhaps could be said to vindicate in some way the truth of the diploma, namely that Bertoendus treats not so much of the monastery of the Maidens situated in the diocese of Troyes as of another, which St. Bercharius obtained from Reolus, bishop of Reims. Reolus had donated, as he himself says in the charter of donation Mabillon, Benedictine Annals, Appendix XXX, vol. I, p. 645., a place from the property of the church of Reims below the city of the Catalauni, in the district of Perthois, above the river Marne, in the estate which is called Gaugiacus, or by another name, which is called Episcopi-villa, which a nun, Ama by name, who ended her life under the title of religion, gave by her charters to the Church of Reims. He then decrees: If perhaps, as is wont to happen, those handmaids of God should wish to move from that place to another place to build a monastery, … let them hold that estate of Gaugiacus … it ought to return to the monastery of Hautvillers, which our predecessor, our lord and father Nivard, formerly bishop, built by his work, together with that letter which we have asked to be made by spontaneous will… Done at the estate of Compiègne, on the day of the Kalends of May, in the thirteenth year of the reign of our Lord King Theoderic. Mabillon connects the thirteenth year of King Theoderic III with the year of Christ 686 or even the following Ibid., book XVII, XLIII, vol. I, p. 531.. But since he says in the place cited that St. Bercharius died on the 26th of March, it is plain that his chronology is not rightly consistent with itself; and we saw above at number 65 that the beginning of Theoderic is conveniently counted from the 70th year of the same century, whence we come to the year 82 or the following, in which our Bercharius was certainly living.

[84] the monastery of Gaugiacum. These things being noted by the way, let us return to our question. Bertoendus certainly does not speak of the monastery of Gaugiacum, which seems never to have been founded, as I said above at no. 65. But even if we should say that it existed, yet it is manifest that Bertoendus was not speaking of the convent of Gaugiacum. For he treats of the monastery of the Maidens, built by Walthildis, of which Adso also speaks at no. 20, and which belongs to the diocese of Troyes: but by no means of the monastery which Ama the nun had given, as is said in the charter of donation of Bishop Reolus. Another thing also prevents our bringing in Bertoendus as speaking of Gaugiacum: according to the letters of Reolus, the convent failing, the estate was to return to the monks of Hautvillers: and this John Mabillon testifies to us in these words, in the place cited: Now Episcopi-villa belongs to the monastery of Hautvillers, as Reolus had decreed, the nuns of that place having, that is, failed. The monastery of the diocese of Troyes, on the contrary, was subject to the abbots of Der, as the letters of Bertoendus themselves abundantly testify.

[85] Finally the reasoning is refuted, From all these it is clear that Bertoendus in fact treats of the monastery of the Maidens, which, being situated outside the boundaries of the bishopric of Châlons, could in no way belong to it. Whence it is deservedly concluded that the diploma is interpolated, on which accordingly the chronology cannot rest. There remain therefore the documents which we brought forward above at no. 73, and which testify that St. Bercharius died in the year of Christ 685. To these surely we must adhere, until another year is demonstrated to us by more certain arguments. One thing remains which could raise some scruple: namely that in the death-year of St. Bercharius the 26th day of March did not fall on the feast of the Lord's Resurrection among the Latins, but on Palm Sunday, as the authors of the book L'Art de vérifier les dates note at this year. For frequent in the Latin Church was the use of the cycle of Victorius of Aquitaine, introduced under St. Leo the Great or his successor Hilarus, which had indeed extinguished the disagreements that had arisen between Westerners and Easterners about the paschal month: yet it had left untouched those discords which affected the day of Easter itself [Compare Henrique Sanclemente, On the emendation of the Common Era, book IV, chap. X, p. 487.]. For, excluding the fifteenth moon from the paschal solemnities, it brought it about that, as often as that fell on a Sunday, the most holy Pascha was celebrated eight days after the Easterners, that is, on the 22nd moon. This case occurs in the death-year of St. Bercharius, 685, in which Saturday the 25th of March coincided with the paschal 14th moon. Accordingly on the following Sunday the Westerners celebrated not Easter but Palms, and accordingly the documents brought forward, which establish that St. Bercharius died on the Sunday of the Resurrection, are also mistaken.

[86] which from a differing computation I have already insinuated more than once that I hold those documents not as contemporary with the fact which they express, but inasmuch as they rest upon domestic tradition, to which belief is not to be denied without fitting ground. Let the writers then have erred in joining the 26th day of March of the year 685 with the paschal solemnity, inasmuch as they afterwards computed it according to the cycle of Dionysius Exiguus; one thing remains unshaken, that they establish as the Saint's death day and year the 26th of March of the year 685. For the rest, I do not believe that the use of the Victorian cycle was so universal that no Church in the West departed from it. A clear testimony of this matter is certainly supplied by St. Gregory of Tours History of the Franks, book X, chap. XXIII, in Dom Bouquet, vol. II, p. 378., which Pagi proves is to be attached to the year 590 Critique of Baronius, at the year 594, § III.: There was doubt about Easter, says Gregory, because in the cycle Victorius wrote that Easter should be held on the fifteenth moon. But lest Christians, like the Jews, should celebrate these solemnities under this moon, he added: but the Latins on the twenty-second moon. On this account many in the Gauls celebrated on the fifteenth moon; but we on the twenty-second. Since indeed in the year 590 many in Gaul already held as antiquated the custom of the Latins, of which Victorius speaks, as to the day, no one will wonder that the same opinion after ninety-five years still had far more followers: of whose number the monks of Der could easily have been.

[87] paschal Longer-lasting certainly was the use of the Victorian cycle in Spain, since Pope Hadrian I, as the eighth century was drawing to its end, reproaches the Spaniards in various letters for disagreeing in the celebration of Easter from the other Churches Gretser, Works, vol. VI, p. 785.: It has come, he says, to our apostolic ears, that many in those parts in

having fallen into folly and madness of heart, dare so to despise the series of reports and admonitions of our predecessors the holy Pontiffs, and our own, according to the institution of the venerable Council of Nicaea concerning the paschal festival, that if the full moon, that is, the fourteenth day of the moon, falls on a Saturday, holy Easter is not celebrated on the next Sunday, namely on the fifteenth day of the moon, but, the same fifteenth day being passed over, they proclaim that the joys of the paschal feast are to be celebrated on another Sunday of the following week, which is the twenty-second day of the moon. Wherein, if the reckoning of the paschal festivals promulgated by the great and venerable Council of Nicaea of the three hundred and eighteen fathers meeting together be weighed more inwardly in the mind, beyond doubt every error and every ambiguity will be taken away from the hearts of those who hesitate. He then shows how Easter is to be fixed according to the decrees of Nicaea, and then concludes: For which reason we do not keep silent, most dear ones, in warning you more earnestly to beware of false brethren, and in the way in which our holy Roman Church, the head of all the Churches of God, celebrates the paschal solemnity, and rightly, if it holds the traditions of God, you also beyond doubt should be zealous to celebrate it, so that as the religion of the faith of Christians makes us alike, it may surely make us equal in festivals.

[88] could be drawn. These things sufficiently prove, in my judgment, that the error which Hadrian reproaches to the Spaniards alone had long since been banished from the Gauls. We have therefore as it were two limits, between which stands in the middle the death-year of St. Bercharius: namely the year 590, in which, as the cited St. Gregory of Tours testifies, many Churches in Gaul already celebrated Easter on the 15th day of the moon, and the year about 780, in which Hadrian fastens that error on the Spaniards alone: certainly no one will be able to show that the monks of Der computed Easter wrongly, especially if he observe that our Bercharius, educated at Luxeuil, where the computation of the Scots long flourished (which permitted the paschal solemnity to be held when the fourteenth moon fell on a Sunday), in the midst of the disagreements, if any still existed then, probably held that opinion which came nearest to the method of computation of St. Columban. And we know that Columban created no slight ill will for himself, because he wished to celebrate Easter in the Gauls after the manner of the Scots, as will be explained more fully at the 21st day of November, when discussion of the deeds of this Saint recurs.

* B. adds apice summit, B. omits apostolicae apostolic

* specula watch-tower

* Ingoberto Ingobert

* B. adds episcopali Cathedra praesidentibus Bertoendus presiding over the episcopal Chair, Bertoendus

* pie piously

* Drea

* finem boundary

* Watmerus

* Waltildis

* adds Deo to God

* concinnandas to be composed

* cuncti [all]

* conjectare to conjecture

* commendem I commend

* B. adds his these

* B. adds sed et but also

* earum their

* B. adds neque [nor]

* seu [or]

* propositis those set over

* B. adds Deo to God

* reatum guilt

* mense in the month

§ VI. Various translations of the Relics of St. Bercharius.

The body of St. Bercharius I have already explained above at no. 4 why the festival of St. Bercharius was transferred to the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November; because, namely, on that day recurred the annual celebration of the translation of our Saint and of the dedication of the basilica of Der. And that the body of St. Bercharius was translated at various times is shown both by the Life and by the book of Miracles. At first the Saint had been buried outside the church: but, says Adso, 26, when the Lord no longer wished to hide him, from the aforesaid miracle of the little knife (floating on the water) and the other things shown at the tomb of the holy man, it seemed good to the servants of God that the body of the blessed father ought to be translated thence, and they, having translated it thence, entombed it behind the altar in the basilica of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which he himself had built while living, where through the suffrage of his merits many gifts are granted to the peoples. According to the manuscript History of Der, sent to us through the care and zeal of the Rev. Mr. Gerard, parish priest at Der, which Dom Grossard, monk of Der and, after the troubles of France, curé at Planrupt near Der, wrote out from documents collected from every side, this translation is judged to have been made on the day before the Ides (the 14th) of February, on which day his memory was celebrated both in the monastery of Der and in the collegiate church of St. Bercharius of Castrumvillanum, where some Relics of the same Saint were kept (Châteauvillain, Department of Haute-Marne, arrondissement of Chaumont). I believe that this first translation took place in the year 686, because among the other wonders he brings forward as a reason the miracle of the little knife, which, since it was alive in the memory of all, cannot be separated by a longer interval from the elevation of the body. He adds also: from whose sepulchre long afterwards oil, welling up, was seen to have flowed down into a vessel prepared for this, exceedingly healthful for all oppressed by disease [Concerning oil flowing from the bodies of the Saints, consult Prospero Lambertini, On the Canonization of Saints, book IV, part I, chap. XXXI, no. 19.]. Adso's very words indicate that the flow of oil was not long-lasting, since it had already ceased before his age.

[90] outside Der In the basilica of Der the Relics of St. Bercharius rested thereafter until the year of Christ 921, in which, the Hungarians threatening, they were translated into Burgundy under Rudolf, duke of Burgundy, as we shall see below, after I have answered a difficulty which other documents seem to raise. For it is established from a letter of Pope Formosus of the year 891 Dom Bouquet, vol. IX, p. 202. and from a diploma of Louis, called the Blind, king of Burgundy, of the year 896 Ibid., p. 679., that some first migration of the monks of Der into Burgundy took place about that time. To them indeed Formosus writes: Hearing that you have escaped from the county of Troyes, from the monastery of Der, from the face of the pagans, and that you have been mercifully received by the same venerable bishop (Barnoin of Vienne), inclined by your prayers, we confirm by the privilege of this authority that you may there (in the monastery of St. Theuderius, Saint-Chef, Department of Isère) serve as soldiers of God firmly and quietly. And in the diploma of Louis these things are read: Barnoin … asked that we should fortify by a precept of our authority a certain monastery of the aforesaid Church of Vienne, dedicated to God in honour of the Holy Mother of God Mary and of St. Theuderius the Confessor, situated in the parish of the same Church, and committed to Adalric the abbot and to the monks formerly of the monastery of Der, to be ruled and for serving God.

[91] not before the 10th century Dom Bouquet, in the notes to the cited letter of Louis, seems to have confused this migration with the translation of the Relics of St. Bercharius. And that indeed wrongly: for this twofold migration falls in a different time, came to a different place, and finally obtained a different patron. The first migration indeed took place in the last decade of the ninth century, the other after the twenty-first year of the tenth century: then the monks of Der in the first migration, leaving the body of their founder at Der, took refuge in the kingdom of Burgundy, which was enclosed by the Alps, the Mediterranean sea and the Durance, with the duchy of Lyons joined to it Plancher, History of Burgundy, vol. I, p. 155.; but the duchy of Burgundy, in which the monks of Der, exiled a second time, established their refuge, situated on this side of the Saône and the Rhône, was bounded by the provinces of Nevers, Bourbonnais, Champagne, Franche-Comté, Beaujolais and Bresse Ibid., p. 224.. Whence it follows of its own accord that in the twofold exile the monks of Der obtained a twofold patron of their refuge; in the former, namely, Louis the Blind, the king, but in the latter Rudolf, duke of Burgundy. Nor can the silence of the writer of the Miracles be to our prejudice, who, relating the one, seems to have been ignorant of the other migration. I ascribe the silence solely to this reason, that the body of St. Bercharius was not then moved from its place: and hence it was foreign to the Anonymous's purpose to dwell on a narrative of this kind.

[92] that it was translated I will confess, however, that the Anonymous seems to have embraced both migrations in one narrative, since, writing that the monks of Der enjoyed the tranquillity of a delightful peace up to these times, he seems to allude to the epoch which preceded the first migration. The tranquillity, he says at no. 5, of so delightful a peace, many wrongly turning it to the increase of impiety, the severity of chastisement again exposes to the rage of the Huns the devastation of the Christian people: Neustria and the greater part of the Gallic kingdom being especially given over to slaughter. Times of such misfortune were hindered by the rule of Charles the Younger, who was known by the name of the Simple, not so much from innocence as from sloth in every civil and military matter, wholly reproducing the manners of his father Louis, who on account of his excessive folly was called the Do-Nothing. Therefore the army of the Huns, holding his rule of small account, as being incited by the just judgment of God, raging in every direction, overthrowing renowned cities from their foundations, destroyed with swords and fire the houses of prayer and the peoples of very many nations. And so the aforesaid brethren of the monastery of Der, terrified by frequent reports of so monstrous a cruelty, the Visigoths, who are also Normans, bursting forth too from the western parts under Hasting as leader, by common counsel, as they had heard the flocks of other churches had done, decide, taking with them the bones of Bl. Bercharius, to seek a hiding place by flight; and this they fix about the banks of the river Saône; which region in those times was reported free from every disquiet under the rule of Rudolf, son of the most noble Richard, duke of Burgundy, who was tenacious of justice and its most famous avenger.

[93] is shown, The epoch at which the monks of Der translated the body of their holy founder into the duchy of Burgundy is easy to determine. For the migration took place when Rudolf was already duke of Burgundy, but not yet king of the Franks: that is, between the Kalends of September of the year 921 Dom Bouquet, vol. IX, Chronological Index, p. LXXXIX. and the third day before the Ides (the 13th) of July of the year 923, on which he is elected king at Soissons and anointed by Walter of Sens Ibid., p. XCI.. We have from the Chronicle of Flodoard Ibid., vol. VIII, p. 176. that in the 19th year of the same century the Hungarians plundered Italy and part of France, namely the kingdom of Lothar (Lotharingia, bordering on Champagne). According to the same Chronicle the Normans were threatening, who in the same year were devastating, trampling down and destroying all Brittany in Cornu-Gallia (Cornouaille, Department of Finistère), situated namely on the sea coast, the Bretons being carried off, sold, and all the rest driven out. Some difficulty is raised by the fact that William of Jumièges, in the History of the Normans, says Ibid., p. 255. that Hasting the Norman, having sold the city of Chartres to Count Theobald and disposed of all his goods, set out abroad and disappeared: but from the sequence of the narrative that disappearance seems to belong to the 9th century. But Vossius rightly observes, in On the Latin Historians Book II, chap. XLIX, p. 405., that many fables about the Normans are read in this writer; which he will not deny who compares with him what Flodoard related in his Chronicles about his own age. Hence it appears that William of Jumièges is at times of doubtful credit: whose assertions are to be corrected from the statements of more ancient writers, such as our Anonymous is.

[94] under Duke Rudolf There is another thing which seems to render the narrative of the Anonymous of Der suspect: namely Urbain Plancher, a Benedictine, in his History of Burgundy Vol. I, p. 233., denies that Rudolf, son of Richard, ever held Burgundy with the title of duke, and therefore calls him a supposititious Duke, led by this reason, that Richard, duke of Burgundy, died on the Kalends of September of the year 923, that is, two months after his son Rudolf had been anointed king of the Franks

; he brings forward John Mabillon as surety for this assertion; but wrongly. He speaks ambiguously here, indeed, but if his text be compared with what he had already said in other places, no room for doubt remains. Over the suburban Basilica of St. Peter at Sens, he says Book XLII, § LIV, vol. III, p. 348., there then (in the year 923) presided Samson, the venerable abbot, who had succeeded Aiglo two years before, at which time Richard, duke of Burgundy, father of the new king Rudolf, called the Justiciar, was buried in the monastery of St. Columba on the Kalends of September. That the words at which time are to be referred to the words two years before shines out from this, that, treating of Rudolf as not yet king, he says Ibid., § XLVI, vol. III, p. 344. under the year 922 that he was the son of Richard, duke of Burgundy, lately dead. For the rest, it is confirmed by many things that the death of Richard is to be placed in the year 921 Bouquet, vol. IX, Chronological Index, p. LXXXIX.: but that Rudolf was anointed king about two years later Ibid., p. XCII.. The chief argument therefore collapses on which Urbain Plancher relies, when he affirms that Gislebert, Richard's son-in-law, succeeded him History of Burgundy, vol. I, p. 237.; and Rudolf is to be placed among the dukes of Burgundy, as the Benedictines do, the authors of the book L'Art de vérifier les dates Vol. II, p. 492 and following..

[95] into Burgundy; although it is uncertain It is uncertain in what place the monks of Der stayed at the time of this second migration; there is no doubt, however, that they were received by Rudolf, as our Anonymous narrates at no. 7: Fired by the most celebrated report of the miracles, the said prince Rudolf, being about to take up the insignia of the whole empire of the Franks, went as a suppliant to the very place of the Relics of the Blessed Martyr, committing himself and his good fortune to his suffrages: and having been presented with many gifts, he relieved the necessities of the brethren with very many largesses, and, consoling them most kindly, promised them the hope of returning speedily and prosperously, with the help of God and of the holy Martyr and with the aid of his own labour; which by God's favour happily came to pass. For the same said prince, being about to bring help to the aforesaid calamity, assumed the empire of the Franks, by no means tyrannically, but by the predestination of divine goodness on account of the merit of his uprightness, elected by the bishops and nobles of the whole Gallic kingdom, to drive thence the rage of pagan perversity. And so, through fear of his power, all barbaric fierceness being forthwith terrified, the tranquillity of peace being restored, they take the boldness of returning to their own who, from fear of the pagans, had been scattered and sought various places of exile. The flock also of the Church of Der, having joined to itself the company of the brethren of the monastery of Fossés, who, fleeing thither for fear of the aforesaid slaughter, had brought with them the bones of Maurus, Confessor of Christ, with like counsel undertake the journey of returning home, going on together and celebrating the divine offices together, until in the progress of the journey they reached the place where they parted from one another, the borders of Der and of Champagne.

[96] to which place: Therefore, a very great crowd of priests and many clerics going to meet the arrival of the most precious Martyr, and his household, which had been scattered in every direction, running back from every side, the eminent protector of his homeland is received at the threshold of the temple which he had built while living in honour of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. This, uncultivated through long desolation, with thistles and brambles too bristling around the altars, the brethren and servants, clearing it on every side, with the glory of great praise again lay up in it the bones of the holy pastor on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November. Granting, what we have already said above, that Rudolf ascended the royal throne on the third day before the Ides (the 13th) of July of the year 923, it may be conjectured from the words of the Anonymous that in the same year the monks of Der celebrated the translation of their father: for Rudolf announces that they will speedily return to their own, which, he says, happily came to pass: for through fear of his power all barbaric fierceness was forthwith terrified. And this is the second translation of the body of St. Bercharius.

[97] the Relics of the Saint carried rather often I do not know whether any translation was afterwards celebrated by the monks of Der up to 1671; unless perhaps some was made about the end of the 10th century; when the new basilica, the old one having been destroyed, was erected by Adso and consecrated by Gebuin, bishop of Châlons, on the eighth day before the Kalends of December of the year 998 Gallia Christiana, vol. IX, col. 871.. Nevertheless the sacred Relics of the Martyr were at times carried out to various places. Thus about the year 1020 the glorious King Robert, says our Anonymous at no. 33, is known to have held a council at the estate called Aireyae, where, since innumerable multitudes of common people of both sexes and of every age came together, to heap up also the devotion of the people setting out, very many bodies of Saints began to be brought by faithful men. Among whose venerable pledges our elders brought no unknown Relics of the sacred body of our patron, fittingly in a bier prepared for their translation. The cause of convoking the synod is expressed by the writer of the History of the bishops of Auxerre Dom Bouquet, vol. X, p. 172.; namely for restoring or strengthening peace; but at the same time, as the Auxerre chronicle of St. Marianus speaks Ibid., p. 275., many things were decreed which would be of profit to the state of the Churches. Aireyae, which is also called Airiacum (Airy or Arcy-sur-Cure, Department of Yonne), is about four miles distant from Auxerre. For the rest, it was the custom, as Rudolf Glaber testifies Book IV of the History, chap. V. Dom Bouquet, ibid., p. 49., for many bodies of Saints and innumerable caskets of holy Relics to be brought to the assemblies of councils [Compare the Chronicle of St. Peter the Living at Sens, d'Achery, vol. II, p. 474.]. To this are to be referred the things which we copied out from the Martyrology of Auxerre above at no. 5.

[98] in the manner of those making supplication: The Relics of the holy Martyr are known to have been carried three times more, as the Anonymous narrates at no. 34 and following. First, namely, when a very great mortality was raging, and men of both dignities were seeking the suffrages of the Saints, the body of St. Bercharius was brought above the river Blaise; and the ashes of the Saint having been brought, the very mortality of men fled. Secondly, the same Relics were carried to Summa Vera (near Der) into the church of St. Mary; the writer confesses that he does not remember for what cause devotion compelled them to institute a solemn supplication of this kind. Finally the third carrying of the sacred body the author himself, an eyewitness, describes at no. 36: It had not rained, he says, from almost the very days of the glorious Resurrection of the Lord up to the Birthday of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. All being therefore not a little terrified by this misfortune, the elders of the people of this Church, gathered into one, seek the presence of the lord abbot Bruno (perhaps in the year 1053, in which there was a great drought Chronicle of Fontenelle, Appendix, in Dom Bouquet, vol. XI.), asking that the body of the blessed father Bercharius be granted them, so that it might be permitted them to carry it about through their fields and borders by serviceable bearing, that by his holy intervention heavenly propitiation might come to the help of the afflicted. The abbot consented: a solemnity having been proclaimed for the feast of the Holy Apostles, on that very day the rain poured upon the earth the abundance long denied, and the earth brought forth for the longing people an abundance of its fruits.

[99] but in the year 1671 into new caskets Nor does anything else occur to me concerning the Relics of St. Bercharius up to the 17th century, in whose 27th year the church of Der was reconciled and its altars consecrated again; for they had been profaned through the Calvinist devastation: but I do not know whether in this whirlwind the body of the holy Martyr was moved from its place. But from the already praised manuscript of Dom Grossard we have that in the 71st year of the same century the Relics were translated into new caskets, of which visitation and translation we subjoin from the same manuscript the process verbal, as they call it, translated from the French into the Latin idiom. In the year 1671, on Tuesday, the thirty-first day of March, in the first year of the pontificate of Clement X, the 27th of Louis XIV, gloriously reigning king of France and Navarre, in the 9th indiction, we the monks, prior and convent of the abbey of Blessed Mary at Der, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the congregation of St. Vanne, there being personally present Dom Gaspard Pesme, Dom François Faudel, Dom Claude Baupoil, Dom Remi Lemaire, the old religious (who, namely, had not received the reform of the Congregation of St. Vanne), Dom Boniface Peronne, prior, Dom Louis Fourrier, subprior, Dom Louis de Recicourt, Dom Maur Montignon, Dom Clement Michel, procurator, Dom Cyprien Loiselier, Dom Hubert Mutel, secretary of the chapter, Dom André Caillet, Dom Paul Horguelin, Dom Odilon Aubry, Brother Antoine Cocquart, Brother Adrien Lefebure, professed religious of the said abbey, constituting and representing its chapter.

[100] were placed, of which In accordance with the decree of our chapter long since passed concerning visiting the sacred Relics kept in our church in wooden cases and caskets, and translating them into more precious ones, which we have had made to honour God in His Saints and to implore their help, yesterday, the thirtieth day of this month, we opened the said cases, and by the instruments and inscriptions we recognized in that one which was said to be of St. Bercharius his sacred bones wrapped in red damask cloth, except the head, which is enclosed in a silver head… Then, the Holy Spirit having been invoked and the prescribed prayers recited, in the presence of many ecclesiastical men and a huge multitude of people both of Der and of the neighbouring places, with all the reverence we could and the ceremonies customary in a like case, we made the translation of the said sacred Relics… We then ordained a general procession through the village of Der, in which these sacred Relics were solemnly carried. In faith whereof, after we had commended ourselves, our monastery and whatever belongs to it to the protection and tutelage of God and His Saints (of whose Relics the divine majesty has deigned to make us the custodians), we have had this instrument written and have fortified it with our hand and that of our secretary. The names cited above follow.

[101] the instrument of the translation is set forth. Today, the last day of March 1671, at the tenth hour of the morning, we, Michel Braudy and Nicolas Regnault, royal notaries in the bailiwick of Chaumont, at the request of the venerable Lords religious, the prior and convent of the abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Der, being in the church of the said abbey before the high altar, on which were the cases in which they have now placed the Relics expressed above, were requested to draw up an instrument of the proceedings: which we have given them to effect as by law: there being present Dom Alexis Bruaux, subprior at Montiermarcy, Dom François Grignon, monk of the same abbey, Messrs. Nicolas, Jean and Louis de la Marche, Mr. Louis Parison, priest and curé, Mr. Edmond Renaudot, Claude Hurlot, Louis Abreveux, Adrien François Philbert Martinet; and Louis Baudry, notable inhabitants of the place of Der, and Mr. Jean Potaye, bailiff at Chavange; who all with us the Notaries signed with their hand the instrument laid up in the case of St. Bercharius. And so until the French disturbances and the overthrow of all the monasteries the body of St. Bercharius was kept in the church of Der, the head indeed in a silver shrine, the remaining bones in a case; which indeed John Mabillon left testified to us for his own time Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, saec. II, p. 843..

[102] In the year 1829 But how these sacred pledges in the midst of

the whirlwinds of a later age were preserved is explained by instruments sent to us by the Rev. Messrs. Favrel, vicar general of the Diocese of Langres, and Gerard, parish priest at Der, to whose eminent kindness we give earnest thanks again and again. I have before me a twofold instrument; one shows the catalogue of the Relics, the other contains the approbation of Gilbert Paul Aragonès d'Orcet, then bishop of Langres. I render each from French into Latin. The former contains the declaration of the Relics, and runs thus: In the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine, on the first day of June, we the undersigned, Jean Baptiste Drion, parish priest at Der, Claude Drion, tonsured cleric, Edmond Oge, sacristan and organist, Jean Baptiste Moraux, schoolmaster, Étienne Augustin Bouillevaux and Alphonse Petit, both choristers of the Parish of St. Remigius at Der, a serious examination having first been made, have been made certain that of all the Relics of which mention is made in the various catalogues of different years, no others have probable and authentic marks, to which faith is to be given, than in the larger shrine the entire body of St. Bercharius … (there follows the declaration of the other Relics in various shrines, cases and biers): in a portable case, the head of St. Bercharius … It was signed: Oge, C. Drion, Moraux, Bouillevaux, Drion.

[103] visited I indicated already above at no. 89 that some Relics of St. Bercharius were formerly at Castrumvillanum: hence when the entire body of the holy Martyr is said to be found at Der, it is to be understood of its greater part. The declaration written above was ratified by the bishop of Langres, Paul d'Orcet, by the following instrument: Gilbert Paul Aragonès d'Orcet, by divine mercy and the grace of the holy apostolic see Bishop of Langres. I. Having seen the process verbal concerning the state of the Relics of the church of Der, and the authentic signs with which, after serious examination, it is furnished: II. Having seen that the shrines, both the larger and the smaller, and the other reliquary cases cannot be, and in fact are not, according to the unanimous opinion of the parishioners and of the neighbours, anything other than the precious inheritance which the ancient and celebrated abbey of Der, together with its name and church, left to the parish, which even today glories in both: III. Having seen the verification made by Mr. Donadei, our vicar general and archdeacon of the district of Wassy, whose report omits nothing that can contribute to establishing or rather confirming the authenticity of the cases and of the Relics contained in them, namely the authentic acts, signed also by the hand of a Notary, of their preservation and translation, which the monks made in favour of the parish before they departed; the acts also drawn up after the departure of the monks by the civil and ecclesiastical magistracy, both for preserving them and rescuing them from the robberies of the rebels, who were demanding precious vessels for coining money, and for putting them back in the sepulchre or chapel from which they had been taken out by force.

[104] the Relics of St. Bercharius Considering that the whole people still honours, as it has always honoured, the said sacred Relics, and that, if the inscriptions affixed to each are not furnished with those authentic letters which formerly won them veneration, the cause is the rage of the persecutors who destroyed them after the dispersion of the pious cenobites who preserved them, as the most certain safeguard of the devotion placed in them: considering moreover that a written title ceases to be necessary whenever there is an immemorial, peaceful and wholly public possession, and that the veneration of the said Relics has suffered no harm from the destruction of the titles: considering also that if, through involuntary error, an inscription belonging to others had been affixed to any of the said Relics, there would be no reason why the veneration due to each of them should be denied, at least in so far as they are found joined in the same case: considering finally that if, against every appearance of truth, there had crept in, both in the shrines and in the cases, which all contain various Relics, some particles less certain than others, to which, as being authentic, the due cult cannot be denied without sin, yet a cult of this kind would not have to be held as superstitious, inasmuch as it is shown in a mass to all the holy and sacred things contained in the said shrines and cases: considering lastly that if, in consequence of what has been said above, some particle placed alone in a shrine should arouse some doubt, it could be joined with one which was subject to no doubt, so that a case of this kind would arouse as much faith as others which are in a like case:

[105] by the bishop of Langres, Hence we, moved by a sense both of justice toward the Saints whose Relics these are, and of charity toward the faithful who make so much of their veneration (those Relics whose authenticity was doubtful having first been wrapped in silk cloths, so that they might thus be laid up under the altars of the said church or in the lower part of the larger shrine), and in order that the Saints whose Relics these are may not be defrauded of the cult justly due to them by the faithful who have chosen or shall choose them as their patrons, and that for those who shall have recourse to the said Saints and their sacred Relics nothing of right which holy Church grants may be lost, whenever they take refuge with true and reasonable devotion in the Saints and their Relics; have permitted, and by these presents do permit, that all the Relics of which mention is made in the present process verbal be henceforth exposed to public veneration; and we will that at no time ever, and under no pretext, they be defrauded of the honour due to them. Moreover, that the same cult may be extended to, and may suffice for, the piety of the faithful who should wish to bring it into their own church, we grant by these presents to Mr. Drion, present curé of the said parish, as often as he shall judge it useful for any person or church, the faculty of extracting particles of the said Relics, but only once in the present circumstance of affairs; not intending to grant him any ordinary right, but on the contrary willing that he may not give authentic letters concerning the same Relics without making special mention that he did not extract them, nor could have extracted them, except by virtue of the special and transitory faculty which we have given him by these presents: in such wise, however, that if he shall judge it useful he may ask the same faculty of us or of our successors. Copies of each of the authentic letters shall be affixed to the said process verbal and enclosed in each case. Given at Langres under our signature and seal, and under the signature of our secretary, on the 23rd day of October 1829. It was signed: † G. P. Bishop of Langres. By mandate, Rieusset.

[106] and likewise in the year 1838. The cited diploma of his predecessor was confirmed by the present bishop of Langres, the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Pierre Louis Parisis, by the following letters: We, Bishop of Langres, in the act of visitation of the parish of Der, having seen the recognition of the Holy Relics kept in the church of the said parish, made by one of our predecessors; having found also in the cases in which he had caused the sacred bones to be deposited a great part of those of which mention is made in the process verbal which is prefixed to the instrument of the said recognition; have fortified with our seal I. the great wooden shrine with glass on its front face, exposed above the altar in the gallery (galerie) of the sanctuary; II. Two smaller shrines, furnished with glass in front and behind, and ordinarily laid up within the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We confirm and prolong the licence granted by our said predecessor of exposing the said Relics to the veneration of the faithful. Given at Montier-en-Der on the 21st of May 1838. P. L. Bishop of Langres. That all these instruments agree with their originals is attested on the 12th day of February 1842 by J. P. Gerard, curé at Montier-en-Der.

[107] The present state of the monastery of Der. The once magnificent monastery of Der was destroyed to two thirds of its extent at the time of the French upheaval, and what remained surviving after the devastation is today a stable for stallions (Haras). Happier was the lot of the abbey church dedicated under the invocation of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul: namely, the parish church under the title of St. Remigius having been destroyed at the same time, the parishioners bought the abbey church, which they use today under the patronage of SS. Remigius and Bercharius. Let it be permitted finally, by way of crowning touch, to complete the series of the abbots of Der, as the Gallia Christiana shows it Vol. IX, col. 909 and following: Claude Antoine de Choiseul-Beaupré was followed by Antoine de Lastic, bishop of Comminges: but when he died a few months later Antoine Éléonor Léon Le Clerc de Juigné succeeded in the year 1781, translated from the see of Châlons to the archbishopric of Paris. The series of abbots is closed by Anne Antoine Jules de Clermont-Tonnerre, himself also consecrated bishop of Châlons in the year 1782, then, the order and state of the Churches having been renewed, archbishop of Toulouse and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.

LIFE OF ST. BERCHARIUS, ABBOT OF DER AND MARTYR, BY ADSO, ABBOT OF DER.

From the edition of Nicolas Camuzat, Promptuarium of the Church of Troyes, and of John Mabillon, Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, collated with the codex of Anchin.

Bercharius, abbot and Martyr, in the monastery of Der. (S.)

BHL Number: 1178, 1179

BY ADSO.

PROLOGUE.

Why Adso wrote this Life. Since holy mother the Catholic Church, throughout the world and universal, everywhere solemnly pays to the glorious palms of illustrious men and to the rewards of their merits the functions of fitting homage, I think that we too should deserve to be punished for the sloth of an unfruitful silence, if the deeds should lie hidden of him whose abundance of virtues especially overflows among us, and whose increases of holy institution shine forth: above all since the deeds of those who went before, recalled to the memory of those who come after, are matter of salvation. Desiring therefore to touch summarily upon the acts and the contests of labours of Bl. Bercharius, glorious abbot and Martyr, we take up this matter of narration with the greater difficulty, the more we feel ourselves unequal to setting forth the greatness of this work: but it is not difficult for Him to loosen the tongueless into words, who is known to make even mute elements solemnly proclaim Him with harmonious voices. We intend therefore to pursue those things which either became clear as noted by his own domestic and most holy community, or which afterwards, by divine favour repaying his merits, could be carried down * to our age.

* proferri brought forth A.

BOOK ONE.

Chapter I. The birth of St. Bercharius, his first instruction with his parents and with St. Nivard: his monastic life at Luxeuil.

St. Bercharius, an Aquitanian, The records of an earlier time have handed down that the Aquitanian district was the place of his birth and the origin of his race. His parents were venerable in life and very religious in their way of living, not moderately adorned with an outward abundance of things, and (what is far more excellent) distinguished by a certain privilege of singular innocence and of prosperous fortunes among their own; who, while they kept the laws of conjugal chastity with integrity of faith, excelling in temporal advantages, yet burning with pious intention and zeal for the work of divine things, by the disposition of the heavenly clemency deserved to receive such and so great an offspring, by whose instruction and merits an innumerable multitude of those who fight in the heavenly camps should bear off the snow-white palms of good fruits, and the manifold cunning of the ancient deceiver, the spoils of faithful souls being taken away, should perish. Which is easy to perceive, if anyone, refraining from loftier things, will deign to attend to these few things in what follows. To whom, namely, as he came forth into the light from his mother's womb with the sanctification of the divine gift already at that time, it is established that the name Bererus was given by his parents in the Aquitanian manner

as his name, as though from the very beginning of his birth he were the master (herus) of a good inheritance.

[2] born of wealthy parents, At that time, when King Childeric ^a was most happily ordering the empire of the Franks, a man indeed most powerful in warlike affairs, but most devoted to the worship of the churches of God, the blessed bishop Nivard ^b, most famous throughout the whole world of the Franks for the greatness of his holiness and religion, leading a heavenly life on earth with apostolic authority, presided over the holy Church of Reims. He, since he was full of authority and grace, being asked to visit various parts of lands and nations, as much for the merit of his life as for the eloquence of his abundant teaching, happened once to have sought the borders of Aquitaine, and is related to have come as far as that estate in which the parents of the man of God were seen to have retired to their own residence. For among the other things which this holy man had received from the endowment of the heavenly dispensation, it is certain * that he flourished temporally too with no moderate titles of paternal inheritance from his forebears; which, namely, if anyone will diligently look, it is ready to hand to recognize, since almost up to these our own times the estates and lands of his right, situated both beyond the Loire, where it is called Diseiae ^c, and also within the borders of Aquitaine, those who are shown to have succeeded him in the government of his monastery were seen to possess with quiet right through long courses of times. But by reason of the evils that came upon them, partly through the negligence of the sluggish, partly also through the cruel infestation of perverse nations, the things which had once been assigned to the uses of the monks appear to have been lost.

[3] first instructed in letters in his homeland, But, to return to carrying out what we began, when the aforesaid holy bishop, received most dutifully, as was fitting, by the parents of the man of God with the liberality of due veneration, wondered at a certain appearance of future disposition in the boy, a candidate of good work, by divine prompting he judged beforehand that he ought to be applied to the sacred mysteries. Animated therefore by this authority of the most holy bishop, his most devout parents, within the tender years of completed infancy, having found the opportunity of time, decide that he should soon be given over to the salutary disciplines of the literary profession; in which, the gift of heavenly illumination going before, together with the earnestness of sacred instruction the increases of spiritual gifts also shone forth. He, namely, did not idly allow himself, amid the playthings of tender age, to gather less ardently those wares from the most clear fountain of letters, by which afterwards, rising into manly strength, he might be able to profit both himself and others according to the measure of the Lord's dispensation. Thus already at that time, ordering with the rigour of inborn virtue and the honesty of just moderation the motions of boyish inconstancy, by which that slippery and fluid age is often dissolved, so that, besides those efforts in letters to which he had been devoted , he allowed nothing else to remain in himself, unless perhaps while he was either doing works of piety or certainly, so far as nature allowed, toiling more devoutly in the sacred exercises of prayer.

[4] to St. Nivard the bishop Therefore when the boy of holy disposition in a short time surpassed those of his age as much in knowledge as in virtue of mind, and had little by little resolved, from the first beginnings of good intention, to aim at a more perfect apprenticeship of the heavenly warfare; with the desire of a mind burning for the heavenly life he began to aspire higher, being sufficient in contempt of earthly things, and attempting with all his efforts, in view of perpetual glory, those things which look to the increase of the virtues: to set eternal things unwearied before his eyes, to weigh perishing things against those that remain, to restrain the efforts of carnal affections by various kinds of afflictions, and to strengthen the steps of youth by the virtue of divine love. Then, spurning the bonds of kinsfolk and homeland, diligently reflecting that the world looks on those who take up the rudiments of a new way of life as pilgrims and strangers, not as its own citizens, he burns with ardour * to seek out the aforesaid most holy Nivard, bishop of Reims. He, as we have said, upheld by the prerogative of apostolic institution, most illustrious in the honour of nobility, adorned with various kinds of virtues, shone as first among the nobles of the Franks in the king's court, most worthy in life and conversation.

[5] he goes to Reims, About that time that city, thronged with cohorts of Saints, and although amid military squadrons under its prince Childeric, yet in harmony with its head, breathed, a populous city, with love of divine worship. Provoked therefore by the favour of so great a reputation, the happy youth Bercharius, most apt for the ecclesiastical sacraments in faith, habit and act, sharing faith and merit with that blessed old man to whom it had long since been said by the Lord: Go forth out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee, and I will make thee grow into a great nation Genesis XII, leaving kindred and homeland, after the course of a long labour, enters the borders of France, being about to be, with St. Nivard the bishop, a most happy citizen (as it is open to perceive in what follows) of the holy Church of Reims, namely for the increase of the divine working which the omnipotence of the Lord the Redeemer had foreordained to fulfil, in winning the gains of faithful souls, through these two most happy fellow workers .

[6] by whom he is handed over to Remaclus to be taught; This blessed bishop, therefore, having obtained, as he had always wished, so fit and so great an assistant ^d, since he himself was entangled in the outward business of handling the commonwealth, frequently took part in the counsels and acts of royal government, and, willing or unwilling, by heavenly ordinance bore the weight of pontifical providence, sedulously exercising, like a perfect husbandman, the ministry enjoined upon him, both publicly and privately, by rebuking, reproving, beseeching, was filled with no small joy at having gained a familiar helper and a most devoted partner in divine works. Wherefore, desiring that he should be more perfectly instructed on every side, he determined that he should be joined to the holier and more religious men of divine science whom he had added to himself from every side by familiar acquaintance, so that, namely, he might learn by the authority of many teachers what he should afterwards minister to many. Among whom at that time, in the court of the king of the Franks, the venerable reputation of the most blessed Remaclus ^e, who was indeed procurator of the sacred archive of the palace, prevailing there, had grown up everywhere, commended by titles of prudence and holiness; which renowned man, namely, afterwards a glorious Confessor of the Lord, approved by many miracles of signs, gentle to all, kind to everyone, modest in prosperity, most patient in adversity, praiseworthy in life, affable in speech, so cautiously handled temporal things that he never turned eternal things away from his eyes.

[7] hence at Luxeuil To the sacred instructions of this so fit and so great a man, to be illumined by the dew of the heavenly nectar, Bl. Bercharius, at the will of the aforesaid bishop, preferred to go and be joined for a time, so that, in him in whom he had perceived the perfect knowledge of doctrine, he too, consulting through him the weakness of his age and manners, might bring back the wares not so much of knowledge as of holy purity. Meanwhile, when the just youth had enjoyed the blessed man's teaching for some time, and had according to his strength tasted beforehand the draught of heavenly wisdom, he was pleased to seek the monastery of Luxeuil, since the fame of its religion, commended by the strict rules of Bl. Columban, had been brought to him. For at that time in all parts of the Gauls this monastery had a singular name both in manifold possessions of goods and also in the cults of divine veneration, because there both a stricter institution and the study of wisdom were held more fully: which place of wonderful aspect , namely, the same Bl. Father Columban had built from the foundations in the vast wilderness of the Vosges, having found buildings of most ancient work with waters hot by nature coming forth of their own accord from the veins of the earth, where he himself afterwards, a number of the faithful having been gathered, was ruler of nearly six hundred monks, and for a long time most nobly presided over the same monastery, and shone with many signs of miracles in the same place, until Brunechildis ^f, the most impious queen, because he had judged unworthy of his converse and blessing her two sons, whom she had received from the adulterous union of the wicked King Theoderic, son namely of King Sigebert, drove him out of that place at the devil's prompting. He, being about to withdraw thence not without great sorrow and grief of all, set over the same numerous company of brethren as ruler Eustasius, a man equally most holy, most illustrious in dignity of race and in life, whom, born in the district of Langres , he had himself trained from boyhood. Thence, seeking Italy, he founded the monastery of Bobbio ^g with no less fitting work, in which, consummated in virtues, he rested in a blessed end.

[8] he professes the monastic life, St. Eustasius, residing in the place of the Father, protecting by words and examples no small multitude of monks in the service of the Lord, became heir of the name and merit of his master. The fame of so great a name being heard, therefore, religious men flow together thither from every side, very many eagerly offer themselves and their children to be trained, counting this above all things as the very greatest, if even after a long endurance of testing hardship they should deserve in some manner to be admitted into the congregation. And now what place or city would not rejoice to have, from the discipline of the blessed man, a bishop or abbot as ruler, since it is established that by the virtue of this teaching almost the whole world of the Franks was first fittingly illumined with regular decrees? Bercharius therefore, servant of Christ , always desiring to ascend to the institutions of a higher life, with the authority and favour of his bishop, hastens with swift step to this place according to his wish, is approved as worthy with eagerness by the aforesaid father ^h, and is associated with the holy cohort of monks, not so much in body as in mind and act.

[9] and in virtues, And being received in common with the rest, and undertaking anew, like a most fresh athlete, the training-ground of the heavenly warfare, forgetful of past contests, and as one who, set in the arena of virtues, had accomplished nothing fully before toward the perfection of the fight, he began again to restrain his spirit by divine works; as if you would see him then for the first time to have taken up the rudiments of monastic strictness, always stronger than himself, and by the grace of heavenly illumination more delightful than the quality of his former life. And now the work of the pen does not suffice to tell how great was the humility in the man of God, how great the virtue of obedience, how great the gravity of modesty, how great the charity, how great the kindness, how great the gentleness, how great also the fortitude of patience. He ran through the business of the obedience enjoined upon him at the command of him who ordered it, in such wise that, directing his mind on high, he neither sought the gains of human praise nor weighed the reward of his glory against any price of a perishing thing. He was zealous also to despise himself in consideration of others, and while in his own estimation he was judged inferior to all, yet on the summit of humility he strove to be found loftier than all: turning over with the deepest sorrow if anyone * in that holy company undertook any strong things which he, by the favour of God's grace, had touched more sluggishly.

[10] he excels chiefly in obedience. It is related, indeed, that about that time he, having been made at one time a minister of the cups in that place, succeeded in turn, at the ruler's will, to the charge of the storeroom. And when he received this workshop of bodily things to be dispensed, since holy obedience had made him vigorous for all things, he prudently brought in what had been committed to him. But one day, while he was occupied in such things, he was suddenly called at the father's order. He had by chance then entered the storeroom, had stood before a vessel, and, holding in his hand the spigot, which is commonly called ducidulum, namely from drawing off drink, was pouring the cereal drink of the jar; wonderful to say! at the nod of a single order, the abbot's name being heard, leaving what he had in his hands, he ran in haste, forgetting in the ardour of obedience

both the watching of the vessel and the care of the jar. And while, having been called, he stood before the presence of the abbot, meanwhile that drink, not ceasing to flow down into the little vessel placed beneath, after it had reached the surface of the vessel, began, packed together above in the manner of a column, to be crowned round about. You would see of its own accord that kind of liquid, which can scarcely be contained by barriers *, raised on high without banks, as once the streams of the Jordan when the people of God passed over; that it might plainly appear how great is the virtue of obedience, whose fruit can in no way perish upon the ground. But he, returning not without the abbot's wonder, was astonished at the deed, which beforehand he had in no way presumed could be done by himself: yet that holy man reckoned what had happened not to his own merit, but wholly to the merit of his abbot.

ANNOTATIONS.

* locupletati enriched A.

* studioque and with zeal A.

* nivea snow-white A.

* Hererum A.

* Chilpericum Chilperic A.

* in … cultu in … the worship A.

* certus certain A.

* quemdam … spe … candidatum a certain … in hope … candidate A.

* opportunitate subeunte the opportunity coming on A.

* nacti having found is lacking in A.

* clericalis puerum the boy … of the clerical A.

* providentia providence A.

* intentus intent A.

* cum when A.

* acceptans accepting A.

* adds coepit began A.

* se esse pro certo aspiciant look on them for certain as being A.

* amore with love A.

* pater father A.

* proceres nobles A.

* pio consortio in pious partnership A.

* is lacking in A.

* dispectationis A.

* adds honeste honourably A.

* Dei of God A.

* adds et [and] A.

* congressu encounter A.

* exercere to exercise A.

* quilibet anyone whatever A.

* adds fratribus brethren A.

* in A.

* clausum enclosure A.

Chap. II. Returned from Luxeuil, he founds with St. Nivard the monastery of Hautvillers.

St. Bercharius, trained in monastic disciplines, When now he had been taught exceedingly well in the regular disciplines, and fortified on both sides with the arms of the divine warfare, so that, namely, by these things which he had learned by long exercise he might now be able to provide for the salvation of very many in the dispensation of the Lord's gain, he returns into the province of Reims to St. Nivard the bishop, who, watching over the guarding of his flock as much by virtues as by goods, as we have said, was dashing back the snares of the enemy, and was enlarging the ecclesiastical dignity with abundant successes: and in whose mind, as the years rolled on, there had long been this ardour, by the prompting of divine inspiration, that in some dwelling-place of his diocese he should build a house for serving the living God in that place where the suitability of things should offer the more fitting conveniences of divine service. This was the very greatest cause of delays in this deliberation, that there was lacking a person, a partner of his wish, for doing it, who should supply the bishop's desire and be found strenuous in the things of God in the earnestness of undertaking so great a joint labour. But the mind long held in suspense could by no means be cheated of the hope of an intention long since conceived. He therefore snatches up Bercharius, applies him to his wish, chooses him in counsel, a man indeed fit in the things of God, endowed with religion, effective in mind, no less agile than prudent in experience of outward things. And although at that time that city, as we have said, both flourished with the talent of many and was held distinguished, to the admiration of the commonwealth, for its traffic in divine works, yet him alone, him he takes to himself as chief, upon whom, with consonant authority and merit, he might lay the care of the future building, and indeed decide by disposition of counsel that he should be specially set over that whole structure.

[12] he is chosen by St. Nivard There is a public estate in the district of Reims, eight miles distant from the city, to which, namely, in an earlier age, it is established that the name Sparnacus ^a was given, which formerly indeed, namely in the time of Clovis, the great prince of the Franks, whom Blessed Remigius, both endowed and approved with apostolic authority, magnificent in doctrine and virtues, had anointed together with his army, as is read in his deeds, by angelic ministry, with the sacred chrism of the regenerating water, the same wonderful father had acquired at the price of no small amount, and had made the Church of Reims, over which by God's authority he presided, its heir ^b. In short, the most glorious bishop of God Nivard, worthily administering the office of pastoral skill, going out both to visit other places of his diocese and also often to this village, did not so much conduct the business of his own advantage as, showing himself affable to all, sedulously devote himself to the salvation of his subjects. And while he spent days and nights watchful in the continuance of his desire of building a monastery on one of his estates, in which he nobly abounded in temporal revenue too, having taken with him, as he often used, that domestic of his, Blessed Bercharius, a cause arose for which he thought to visit the aforesaid village according to custom. In the course of this journey, by which one goes to the same village, adjoining the banks of the river Marne, there was a most pleasant place of his own right, which, in a little recessed bay on a most delightful * mountain side, with green grasses and rivulets of water flowing gently down from the lofty summit, and thickly set round about on the slope with trees and vines, offered delights to the eyes of those who beheld it.

[13] as his partner in founding The holy Bishop, therefore, having undertaken this journey, when he had already reached those parts by the slope of the mountain where that loveliness of the place had presented itself nearer to the sight of one travelling over against it, is weighed down upon the horse-carriage by which he was borne by so heavy a sleep that, deprived forthwith of all power of going on, he called out to his fellow-minister Bl. Bercharius, and ordered all that mounted company which then by chance accompanied him to stand in place, and indicated, rather patiently, by what goads he was urged to sleep. Behold, he says, by the onrush of a monstrous drowsiness I am shaken otherwise than usual: so that I should be wholly confident * that I am powerless to advance my step from here. Let there be procured therefore for my wearied limbs among these green places the pleasure of turning aside a little, that, strength returning through sleep, the power may be restored of completing the journey begun. Among the widely spreading groves, with spreading boughs and green leaves, a beech pleasing to the matter in hand is chosen.

This, among the other alders, raised its head as high As cypresses are wont among the pliant wayfaring-trees.

Under this tree therefore they quickly throw themselves for the sake of resting. Thus, hastening to be received, his head composed, in the lap of his inseparable companion Bl. Bercharius lying on the ground, he stretches himself here, lying beneath the covering of the spreading beech. What miracle was then shown from heaven I have thought should not improperly be made known by the office of the pen, that the truth of heavenly illumination might show who they were whom the density of the woods had covered.

[14] the monastery, by a wonderful vision Meanwhile, while the bishop was resting, the holy man Bercharius, his eyes fixed upon heaven, suddenly beholds through the clear and visible air a dove descending from on high, radiant with snowy brightness, and settling gently upon the same tree beneath which they had remained lying. And when he directed the keenness of his eyes upon it, desiring diligently to explore into what parts that snowy bird would decide to turn, suddenly, the oarage of its wings being loosed, it springs from the tree on which it had settled, and, cleaving the empty air, flying round the space of the future building, marks out with a circle the place in which the monastery ought to be built, and sanctifies it with its presence; this lustration being completed, it is again received by the known tree. And when the messenger of heaven had repeated a third time the same circles of its compass, as a sign of the firmness of the thing to come, it is hidden in the open heaven, and nonetheless a presage of the divine will is opened to men dwelling on earth, and a trace of new wonder is left. This holy man understands, pure as he was in mind, that it is a heavenly sign, by which both the minds of the doubting might be strengthened and a work long delayed might be founded in the service of God ^c. O blessed man, to whom is shown with bodily sight the dignity of an angelic vision, in the form of a gleaming dove, to approve the testimony of innocence and purity. There is in this matter also this, no less

admirable, that what he had perceived with bodily eyes, this same thing the holy bishop, as he rested, had perceived in the sleep of a heavenly vision. He, when, roused from sleep after a little space of rest taken, he raised his head from the ground , taught beforehand by heavenly revelation, said: O most faithful partner of my wishes, how pleasing it is to me to have turned aside here a little for a time for the sake of sleep, since it is established that you, by the grace of God, have learned from heaven the mystery of so great a revelation. For behold, I now go forward from here rejoicing, I follow the signs of the heavens; what I had long carried in my heart, deferring it, I am compelled by the secret of a wonderful vision to undertake the sooner: but lest the unexpected matter lead you further, I will plainly set out what I have seen.

[15] shown beforehand, And first, that the house of God is present here, as once to the most happy ancient patriarch, and that the gate of heaven has been divinely shown to me, the unworthy servant of Christ the Lord. For as soon as my limbs were laid down, suddenly seized here by sleep, when the force of nature scarcely moved me as I rested to one side or the other, I seem to myself to see the form of a dove present from on high, like snowy whiteness, which, after settling on this tree, not uncertain whither it was tending, encircles this place, flying in swift course, and, a threefold circle being equally completed, makes for the summit of heaven. I believe indeed that this is a portent from God profitable to the hope conceived, that what had been undertaken in wish should now, heaven forewarning, be carried out the more speedily. When the holy bishop had finished saying this, Bl. Bercharius, who had made of his lap a resting-place for the holy man, said: Whatever, most holy father, you testify has been divinely brought to you in vision of the spirit by a heavenly prodigy, know that I too, by the manifest power of God, have beheld it bodily. As they thus compared these things with one another, the one indeed what he had perceived in sleep, the other what he had seen with bodily eyes, the matter is brought into view, that that place, marked out by angelic lustration, had been by a wonderful disposition most graciously chosen by God for performing the homage of divine service. Thus, the grace of so great a revelation from heaven and at the same time of consolation having been received, both being made more certain, and being specially taught what was doubtful by the designation of the place, they both rise thence, and so the most blessed prelate, directing his eyes to heaven, and forthwith praising Him with the whole intention of his heart, gave thanks to Him upon whom, from the secret of the eternal Father, the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form in a dove, and who blessed the streams of the Jordan by the dipping of His sacred body, for the washing away of our sins, heaven being opened.

[16] near the estate of Sparnacus, So great and such an auspice therefore going before for the founding of an eternal tabernacle, the eminent prelate said to Bl. Bercharius: To you and your industry I determine to commit this holy work, that I may by right appoint you, whom I do not doubt to be perfect in prudence and holiness, also chief in the construction of the heavenly building. Which the man of the Lord, ardent as he was, overflowing with his whole heart toward the Lord, to whom surely all sloth was hostile, but an unwearied efficacy of labour friendly, willingly taking up, embraces with as great a desire as the greatness of merits had grown in him by heavenly grace. And since he had already before made himself a temple of the Holy Spirit through virtue, he too longed to found for the Lord, by the beauty of an earthly mass, a temple visible even to the eyes, trusting, namely, on every side in the help, as much divine as of the holy bishop, in all things. For it is certain that he was so pleasing and acceptable to all the kings of the Franks of his time, and to the bishops too and the nobles of royal dignity, that if anything in divine worship, or even in the opportunities of earthly convenience, was on his heart, he easily obtained it from them: which the diligent reader will also be able plainly to find in its place in what follows, if he will review the benefits which were granted him at various times by the munificence of the royal majesty and of the princes of the Franks. Upheld, namely, by their authority and favour, he now girds himself the sooner for the business of putting together the building, prepares supplies of means, and, a sedulous * worker, assigns all things which seemed necessary for so great a work.

[17] in the place which And so in the estate of the aforesaid place, which , situated (as we have said) on the sloping side of the mountain, presents , by a more amply recessed bay, a most beautiful plain of caressing loveliness, and, looking down over the banks of the river Marne lying beneath far and wide in its prospect, invites with a certain soothing pleasure of the view, and which from of old had received the name Altum villare, he encloses the space of the angelic designation, as it had been shown from heaven, with a circuit of walls, the foundations having been laid, and measures out all the walls of that building, in the manner of the dove passing through the air, with a measurement looked up to from below. Nor did he desist from the works of the divine worshipper until, heavenly Providence assenting, and the clemency also of Childeric, king of the Franks, and of the sacred prelate lending aid, he completed with the wished-for perfection the work which he had undertaken to the praise of God ^d. But that tree, which had formerly stood as a most rich beech , on which the dove sent from heaven had earlier settled and by its circle had expressed in flying the site of the monastery, is cut down after deliberation had, and, the wishes of all being brought together in common, in the place to which it had been fixed he set up an altar in veneration of Bl. Peter, prince of the Apostles. And to the consecration of the basilica other bishops also come together with St. Nivard the metropolitan bishop, all the clergy and numerous crowds of both sexes rush in, the nobles of the Franks too run together with no less eagerness, and all exult in the praises of God with equal greatness of joy for the praiseworthy work of the blessed man Bercharius. And on the southern side of the same mountain the holy man built another church, which he decided should be honoured with the name of Mary, ever Virgin, Mother of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ. He also most prudently put together the enclosures of the monastery and all the workshops of the appropriate order for pursuing the observance of the regular life, gathered religious men of the monastic way of life, and diligently fulfilled all things which were judged convenient for this order. And the most holy prelate assigned copious revenues of estates, both those which seemed to be of his own right and those also which, Bl. Bercharius interceding, could be obtained from the very chief men of the Franks, to the necessary uses of the servants of God, so that, namely, in the same monastery the people serving God might be increased in merit and in number by the labours of both.

[18] is called Altumvillare. These then are the holy beginnings of the great works of this * Blessed Father of ours Bercharius: but there still remain, for the homage of the divine majesty, greater contests than the earlier labours, which the sequence of events will afterwards show in this work. He, namely, when he was perfect in the sublimity of spiritual exercise, continual in the meditation of the divine law, yet did not seek temporal glory, but with purity of mind constantly desired the eternal, and would neither be inclined to light good fortune nor be loosened by empty praise. And now, the whole structure of that sacred temple being completed, how great was the immensity of exultation for these two most holy men, how pleasing the companionship of unanimous affection, how great the love of the divinity, how great the ardour of the heavenly life, neither speech can grasp nor tongue in any way set forth.

ANNOTATIONS.

had put to death by hanging. Whence the Lord Nivard made peace between him and Reolus, who had as his wife his niece, the daughter of Childeric, and so Theoderamnus himself, together with his other brothers, handed over that same possession to St. Nivard, an exchange having been received from him.

* plurimas coenobii aedificandi many … of building a monastery A.

* adds ut superius diximus as we said above A.

* is lacking in A.

* A. adds secum with him.

* amoenissimus most delightful A.

* ubi where A.

* coactus socium suum compelled … his companion A.

* considerem I should consider A.

* niveus snowy is lacking: adds fortuito by chance A.

* aperto open A.

* ab imis from the ground is lacking in A.

* sed ne longius rem inopinatam differam but lest I put off the unexpected matter longer A.

* adds illi to that A.

* Dominus the Lord A.

* Domini the Lord is lacking in A.

* ostendit has shown A.

* conferentibus conferring A.

* in place of in has sicut [as] A.

* fuerat otiositas idleness had been A.

* in place of jam has dignum worthy A.

* ut fidelis as a faithful A.

* pro eo quod because A.

* reddat may present A.

* circumdespici A.

* adds tempore time A.

* in place of fagus beech has ibidem there A.

* utrumque … sexus of both sexes is lacking in A.

* hujus this is lacking in A.

Chap. III. St. Nivard having died, and the monastery of Hautvillers being completed, St. Bercharius founds Der, and is unjustly slain.

St. Nivard having died, But while they were held, how gloriously, engaged in these studies of holy works, pouring forth the grace of holy exhortation through the peoples and inciting the minds of the faithful in every direction to the glory of eternity, when now the heavenly clemency had decided to repay the praiseworthy life of its prelate Nivard with the commerce of perpetual joy, and to render him for brief labour the palm of abiding glory; perfect in work, consummated in virtues, the day of the Kalends of September arriving, released from the bonds of death, he passed to the Lord ^a, having obtained the robe of blessed immortality, made a fellow citizen with the hosts of Angels in that dignity of the heavenly court, a sharer with the Apostles, a co-heir of the Martyrs and Confessors, he enjoys insatiably the sight of Him whose love is held for certain never to have departed from his breast; who, although according to the law of the flesh he has paid the debt of the human condition, yet lives in the glory of perpetual exultation, and is there beyond doubt ready to come to the help of our miseries the more excellently, if he be asked from the heart, the more powerfully he is now seen to be joined to that supreme and invisible Spirit, made himself, through the power of Him who knows all things, one who knows all and hears. To the obsequies of his body the whole city of Reims rushed, clergy and people of both sexes came together, many also from the neighbouring cities were present, marking the departure of so great a pastor with the solemn rites of hymns mingled with pious grief. His body indeed, thronged by the various companies of the peoples, is borne with worthy honour as far as the basilica of St. Remigius by St. Bercharius and also by the holy bishops who had flowed together thither that day, the whole multitude of his flock following, and, to be laid in an excellent mausoleum, received there a most seemly burial, the most holy man Bercharius being left surviving the glorious prelate in the aforesaid monastery of Hautvillers.

[20] St. Bercharius completes the foundation of Hautvillers: He, although he was deprived of the solace of so great a father, yet by no means desisting * from the intention of the work begun, instructed the minds of his subjects by examples and by words. And the place which he had begun to build, illuminating it with goods and with varied adornment, he withheld nothing of his industry until he brought it to the summit of the highest perfection. For, steeped in the dew of spiritual gifts, now joined to the Angelic life, a citizen of the heavenly homeland,

With the teaching of justice he cherished the fold of Christ, Establishing for the faithful people heavenly temples. No less, burning, did he shine forth in great deeds; What the former fathers did, upheld by piety, Giving to the peoples the best lessons of the blessed life.

For the grace of the Lord going before, he shone in that place with many signs of miracles, and, opposing himself to the misfortunes of various discomforts that came upon them, bestowed upon the peoples many profits of heavenly benefit: healings of bodies, salvation of souls. To the kings of the Franks too, who succeeded one another at different times, and to the nobles of the palace, he was so affable in all things that, enjoying their familiarity as he wished, he obtained the more quickly what he aimed at, and in building dwellings for the servants of God their largess fully supplied him with means and resources. If anyone by chance remains doubting and incredulous at these things, let him wonder at the walls of the aforesaid place, let him look at the buildings, let him diligently survey the works: it will be plain to one desiring to know of how great merit he was through whom the Lord deigned to work such and so great things.

[21] and he goes into the forest of Der, The affairs, therefore, both outward and inward, of the aforesaid monastery of Hautvillers having been honourably ordered according to the worship of God, the already mentioned father Bercharius, impatient of bodily rest, sought out places suitable for himself for the sake of gaining souls. For going out thence, the gift of God running before, he strove to seek the vast solitude of the forest of Der: in which place, not unmindful of the intention with which he had come, he searched out with watchful solicitude a fit site for building a monastery. While thinking on these things, then, the grace of God leading the way, he betook himself to a certain matron named Waltildis, who, ennobled by proud blood, rejoiced in an abundance of very many estates from her forefathers : from whom the holy man bought, by the gift of an agreed price, a part of the forest, namely that place which is commonly called Mangis-villare: and building there a little cell and consecrating it to the honour of Bl. Mary, he gathered, as far as was possible, most diligently a company of maidens who should serve God and His Mother ^b. For, going to the public road commonly called Cantilla, he received for a price from passers-by eight captive maidens *, whom, instructing them in holy religion, he established to remain there dedicated to God. From this, then, by the supporting suffrage of Christ, the number of virgins grew up to the sum of sixty, over whom the aforesaid father solemnly set as abbess the niece of the above-written matron Waltildis.

[22] where he begins various monasteries, These things also being duly done, shaking out unweariedly the more secret parts of the forest, he longed exceedingly to know whether he might find anywhere more convenient places for building little cells: coming to a certain place named Lutosae ^c, reckoning it fit for building a cell, he strove with exceeding solicitude to fulfil his wishes. Judging, then, that it was in no way fitting to undertake this by his own strength, he went to him in whose power this estate was. For at that time King Childeric, most nobly governing the kingdom of the Franks, most willingly acquiesced in the holy man's petitions. To him therefore the eminent father went, and, having as partners in his good wishes men burning with the love of God, Leodegar and Mummolenus the bishops, and Amalric also and Wulfaud the nobles, he obtained from the king leave to build for himself in the same place a basilica, which, consecrated in honour of Bl. Martin, the aforesaid King Childeric kindly endowed with one league ^d all around from the church of the forest. But Blessed Bercharius, not content even with these, founded for himself a little cell near the place which is called Puteolus ^e, in that part which is now called Monasteriolum, in honour of Blessed Maurice ^f, hoping that he had found a fit place for building a monastery. But when this too did not seem suitable to him, he dedicated ^g a certain church above the river Voire in honour of St. Sulpicius. Nor even there judging the site would be fit for a monastery, with ever-watchful mind, like a wise architect *, he asked Him who shows Himself present to those who seek Him to grant places suited to his wishes.

[23] At a certain time, therefore, when the divine clemency no longer willed the mind of its servant to be drawn hither and thither, it granted, by signs going before, that a place suited to his wishes should be found . until at length near Puteolus For as he was going through the hidden parts of the forest, he came by chance to a certain place where he found swineherds: whom he addressed courteously, and, presenting them with the gift of a gold coin, asked to be shown what places, more suitable for dwelling, they had at some time observed while going about the forests, saying that it was his intention, in a fitting place for dwelling, by rooting up the forests, to mark out the tents of cenobites: that he had indeed tried various places, but had found in no place at all dwellings in which he could securely remain. And they, the reward having been received, answer the holy man in such words of their mind: We indeed, since firm faith holds us, having been rewarded, have decided ^h to obey your proceedings according to your wishes, and are ready to show a place fit for dwelling according to our knowledge: for very often we have found there herds of swine when we had already despaired of them, nor is there hope of seeking pigs that have been led astray elsewhere, since the lost swine always make for that place without any guide. There is also there, lord father, a certain beech of no unknown miracle, beneath which, since we have often seen lights kindled without the approach of men, we suspect * that there is something divine. Now, said Bl. Bercharius, go before quickly, and of so great a

presage point out the places, and, rendering me, who follow, now at last more at ease in mind, long held in suspense as I have been, release me from so great a mass of cares. * These things said, the aforesaid Father hastens to the place to receive the proof of what was said: nor, accepting the testimony of the shepherds in vain, did he believe that the miracle had been wrought by God, and that the place had been shown him by God, who would not suffer His servant, intent on various things, to be cheated of his own labour. For He who had foreknown that a company abounding in the performance of good works was to be gathered there, worthily marked out beforehand the beginnings of the blessed man's works by such a presage: which place is two full miles distant from the aforesaid place which is called Puteolus. There therefore Bl. Bercharius, the forests having been rooted out with much labour, chose the site for building a monastery. Thence he proceeds to the palace, to supplicate the clemency of the king concerning this business.

[24] he finds a place fit for a monastery: And there helping him, through the divine grace from whose desire he was doing these things, St. Leodegar ⁱ the bishop, and Almaric the Mayor of the palace ^k, Fulcoald also and Wulfaud, Nivard too and Atelanus ^l the bishops, he obtained that there be given him by the king from his fisc a forest which is called Vassiacus ^m, round about the aforesaid place, as by royal authority it is held marked out, whence he might be able to have the means and estates for establishing the monastery. And since also, God so disposing, the king most willingly favoured him in very many things, he went so far as to grant him as a gift a hall, built with seemly ornament as befitted the royal majesty, in the place which is called Puteolus, where he had been accustomed often to come for the sake of hunting: whence the lord Bercharius himself built a church to be consecrated to God in honour of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which from the aforesaid place he called Puteolus. And the holy man, when he bought the maidens mentioned above, together with them received for a price eight captive men, whom, instructing them in holy religion, he established as the first monks in the same place. And many, admiring his holy way of life and religiousness, through his exhortation, by the favour of God who wills no one to perish, leaving all things which they were seen to have in the world, gave themselves over to God under the monastic norm and under the teaching of that holy father. He therefore brought water to that monastery from afar, prepared workshops for all necessary things, and, arranging also in order the dwellings of the maidens, went to Jerusalem and obtained very many sacred Relics, and brought back with him excellent ivory tablets: and so, going many times to Rome, he brought back the Relics of very many Saints, and with the bishops laid them up honourably to be kept in the aforesaid places: in which places, by the suffrage of the merits of those Saints whose Relics have been brought there *, Christ granting it, more abundant benefits are bestowed upon the faithful peoples.

[25] he dies When therefore such great contests of labours had been run through in the course of this world for the prize of the heavenly life, and the Lord was already disposing to give His labourer a worthy reward, He granted him beforehand to know the impending time of his bodily dissolution. For, the Paschal solemnity being now at hand, on the fifth weekday, on which the Lord's Supper was held, the solicitous father of the flock committed to him devoutly went to the monastery of the maidens, to fulfil the precepts of the Lord after the custom of the faithful. Among many words of exhortation, then, and addresses of consolation, he foretold to them this also, which had been divinely made known to him concerning the dissolution of his own body. Know, little daughters, that, the heavenly call being at hand, I can in no way remain longer in this body; nor grieve * as for a pastor taken away, since you hold Him fixed with certain devotion of heart, espoused as you are to the eternal guardian and king. As you are, then, no longer to be sustained by any bodily help from me, I commend you as my own daughters to the heavenly ruler. At these addresses of consolation, then, they burst into tears with vehement wailing, and the holy father, softening their grief with words of exhortation, bidding them farewell and blessing them, departed. And when all had been performed with psalms and hymns, he set out on the way back to the monastery, to do the same for the monks, the poor and the pilgrims.

[26] slain by Daguinus the monk, While he was ordering many things, then, it happened by chance that he decided that his little son, whom he had received from the sacred font and had determined should be a monk, Daguinus by name, should, his faults requiring it, be struck with the lash of rebuke, as is the custom. For this man, as afterwards became clear, most wicked and shameful, with a polished brow, was hiding under a sheep's skin the trappings of a ravening beast. And so, in desert of his iniquity, delivered over to the devil with Judas the traitor, bearing with indignation the instructive reproofs of his father, the manly bile swelling under his breast, the madman strove to deliver the holy man to an unjust death. At length, when the blessed father, not a little wearied by the day's labour of anxiety, had reclined on his bed together with the brethren and given his limbs to sleep; since he who reproves the guilty incurs hatred, that same son of Satan, armed with the weapons of impiety, after he believed him weary and asleep, rushing upon him, assailed him with a mortal wound. For the raging man struck him with a little knife, and the shameless son stained his own hands with the blood of his father. And Daguinus *, conscious of his guilt, seizing the iron with which he had struck the Saint, threw it as quickly as he could, as though to hide it, into the fishpond which at that time was within the enclosure of the monastery. You would then have seen the water, as though aware of so great a crime, shudder to receive the iron into itself. For as soon as it touched the water it floated wonderfully upon the waters like a feather of the lightest substance; and the murderer himself, made mad, made for the church, and with bloody hands began to ring the bell.

[27] And the brethren, when they heard the bell at an unaccustomed hour, whom he forgives: rising in great astonishment, and hearing that the holy man had been slain, ran to his bed: but they found the spirit still wavering in him with anguish. The brethren therefore, having seized the aforesaid Daguinus, brought him to the holy man, desiring to know what the severity of his clemency would judge concerning so great a crime committed. At length the holy father, not unmindful of the words of the Lord by which He supplicated the Father for His persecutors, saying: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," mercifully remitted to him the fault which he had committed against him. Strive, brother, he said, that God may be made placable to you by penance: for as far as concerns me, I release you free from all impiety. Go therefore, son, to Rome, that he may show you free of this crime who, having received the power of binding and loosing, came to the help of various kinds of diseases by the shadow of his body . Daguinus therefore went forth and, by the command of the blessed man, made for Rome; whence he did not afterwards return.

[28] he is buried at Der. But Blessed Bercharius, sick for a very long time with the anguish of the wound, at length released from the flesh ⁿ, happily sought with exulting spirit the joys of the heavenly life. And at the death of so great a man, religious men flocking together from every side, he was buried in a certain place outside the monastery, flourishing there, by God's gift, in many effects of miracles. But when the Lord no longer wished to hide His Saint, from the aforesaid miracle of the little knife and the other things shown at the tomb of the holy man, it seemed good to the servants of God that the body of the Blessed Father ought to be translated thence, and * they, having translated it thence, entombed it behind the altar in the basilica of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which he himself had built while living; where through the suffrage of his merits many gifts are granted to the peoples. From whose sepulchre long afterwards oil, welling up, was seen to have flowed down into a vessel prepared for this, exceedingly healthful for all beset by disease. Since therefore, weighed down by the burden of sins, we by no means presume by our own strength to attain to the sum of his works, let us implore the help of the grace of Him who said, "without me you can do nothing," so that we, who are pressed down by the desert of our sins, may be lifted up by the right hand of His power, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and is glorified, God, for ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

* adds quoque also A.

* autem however is lacking in A.

* adds sanctissimum most holy A.

* universi [all] A.

* a divinis, cessabat operibus, sed ceased from divine works, but A.

* eo cogitante while he was thinking A.

* valde loco a proavis greatly, in place of from her forefathers A.

* puellas centum a hundred maidens A.

* ejus servituras who should serve Him A.

* puellulas little maidens A.

* leugam unam ei one league to him A.

* aliam divina gratia inspirante, juxta locum illum qui nunc monasteriolum dicitur, ad honorem B. Martini condidit [by the inspiration of divine grace he founded another near that place which is now called Monasteriolum, in honour of Bl. Martin] A.

* quemdam actutum … honori aedificavit forthwith built a certain … in honour A.

* igitur therefore in place of etiam A.

* adds super hoc concerning this A.

* paulo post a little after in place of iri repertum A.

* aliquo [any] is lacking in A.

* cum oculis nostris with our eyes A.

* cum accensa kindled is lacking in A.

* subputamus we reckon A.

* adds Cum When A.

* emerat had bought A.

* adds inde thence A.

* illo that A.

* lugeatis mourn A.

* In ordinando In ordering A.

* adds se himself A.

* Daguinus is lacking in A.

* Deo volente pro anxietate nutantem by God's will wavering instead of with anguish A.

* divina clementia the divine clemency A.

* at A.

BOOK TWO.

Of the various misfortunes of the monastery of Der and the miracles of St. Bercharius, by an anonymous author. From the edition of Surius, Lives of the Saints, collated with the Promptuarium of Nicolas Camuzat and the manuscript codex of Anchin.

Chap. I. The misfortunes of the Monastery of Der under the Carolingians.

BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.

The occasion of the writing. The carrying out of this former work, by the ordinance of divine condescension, for instructing the memory of those who come after, the distinguished prudence of the most skilful * Asso, abbot of the often-named church of Der, ennobled with most brilliant discourse: intending, as he set out beforehand, to pursue those things which, noted in whatever way by the successors or disciples of the most holy abbot and Martyr Bercharius, could be carried down to his age. But the things which, repaid to his merits by divine favour after the blessed man's death, he had promised he would relate, he by no means set forth, leaving untouched also very many of the things noted, namely, being disturbed by the hindrances of various affairs, and above all being cut off by the event of a hasty death: whence our age has hitherto been clouded by ignorance of the miracles of the kindly Bercharius, so very often named before, which, innumerable times having rolled by before, the working of the divine sublimity had wonderfully performed either at his tomb or in various places at the invocation of his name ^a. These things I have brought in, by no means detracting from the simplicity of his life, or affecting the pomp of modern flattery, but lest the levity of anyone should object that before the times of the venerable Asso all our antiquity is mute: which came about not so much through carelessness and the rarity of writers as through the barbarous fierceness of nations bursting in, or also through the frequent contention of neighbouring peoples among themselves.

[2] Der, disfigured, For not long after the passing of the glorious Martyr, a quarrel having arisen between Ragamfred and Charles, who, on account of his excessive restlessness, unseen before in Christian times, was called Martel ^b, innumerable nobles having been almost reduced to poverty, very many churches were brought utterly to nothing, their possessions, bondsmen also, and priestly vessels and goods being distributed to those who handled secular arms and the internal business of wars. By the outcome of a disturbance of this kind the brethren of the aforesaid place of Der were compelled to take up military arms with the monastic habit, deciding by their own judgment that the disgrace of shameful foulness would be ascribed to themselves and their posterity if, by reason of such exercise, they suffered themselves to be perpetually deprived of the possessions of goods of various usefulness, assigned in various places for their stipends by the provision of Blessed Bercharius. On this occasion, having taken on an unfitting habit, they began first to stray from the path of the sacred order by applying themselves to expeditions, and at last to bear ill even their own garments, holding them as monstrous hindrances to their arms: and so, adding a counsel a little better than the former, spurning their cowls, they clothed themselves in clerical garments, judging that in that adornment they would more fittingly serve almighty God and also worldly pursuits.

[3] Odo, abbot of Stavelot, restores it. In such manner, the face of that place's magnificence being changed, it began to be ruined and to slip into worse by various impulses, until by divine mercy and the merits of our most Blessed protector Bercharius the report of so great a ruin reached the ears of the Emperor Louis. He shone with every light of goodness to such a degree that by right he took to himself the proper name of Pious; whose most prudent counsels were constantly attended by most holy priests, and also most religious abbots, among whom, for the honesty of his life and the uprightness of all his knowledge, was held conspicuous Odo ^c, abbot of the place called Stabuletum, which the description of the former text touched upon beforehand as built by St. Remaclus the bishop, to whose ordering the happy Martyr Bercharius once handed over the first flowers of his youth to be instructed, leaving in that place a conspicuous memorial of his own apprenticeship. When therefore the said king was busy reforming, so as to restore it for the better, the worship of the churches of God depraved by various tribulations, by a decree of the royal counsel he delegated the care of the monastery of Der to the abbot named above: so that by his industry the same place might be able to take up the nourishment and records of its ancient institution and nobility, which even the royal annals testified had been very great. And so the lord Odo, the venerable abbot, having undertaken the carrying out of the memorable work, upheld by a college of bishops and fellow abbots, going to the aforesaid place, all religion having been driven out of it for an age, and most vigorous brethren of his order having been set in order there, restored to the uses of the brethren the estates or gifts of the church, ruined by innumerable mischances and distributed by royal and at the same time episcopal authority, even at the greatest quantity of price: searching out the ancient privileges, strengthened, as was fitting, by imperial munificence: nor did he desist until the religion of that place, polished to a nicety, shone forth to the whole world of the Franks.

[4] by the aid of St. Bercharius a cripple is healed To the very brethren of the same place also there was not lacking the conspicuous power of their special provider Bercharius, by which he might make known to them that his magnificent presence was with them from heaven. For when the annual solemnity of the birthday of St. Remaclus, the venerable bishop ^d, was at hand, the rectors delegated for the administration of the same monastery, among many preachings of sacred doctrine, very often inculcated also upon the memory of their subjects the wonderful acts of the precious Confessor of Christ: by which the minds of the brethren being kindled, they all with equal will pledge themselves to keep in his vigils a solemn night for St. Bercharius. Meanwhile it happened, by God's favour, on the day before that celebration, that there was present there a certain man crippled in all his limbs, so much that the soles of his feet seemed joined to his thighs; and he began to insist with efforts of great prayers that it might be lawful for him, passing the night in the same basilica, to await the help of God, saying that it had been made known to him from heaven that in the church of the Blessed Martyr, and on the feast day of the holy Confessor, there would be for him the beginning of the health he desired. The brethren, hearing this, were much more gladdened, and grant the suppliant every opportunity of passing the night, as he had asked. And so, the synaxis of compline having been celebrated, as the brethren were taking the rest of first sleep, the sick man by sudden cries roused the sacristans of the temple and all the brethren resting in the chamber of the dormitory. And rising, stupefied by the sudden disturbance, they enter, so to speak, unwillingly to perform the solemnities of the night office: and all things having been duly performed, they go to look at the wonderful deed, namely the limbs of the cripple restored to a whole state.

[5] a cripple. Thence exceedingly gladdened, as they had wished, they are roused again to repeat the praises of the almighty Lord: rendering with high-sounding voices their suppliant vows over the most loving consolation of the aforesaid Saints. And the sick man, being asked what had appeared to him at the hour when his cry sounded in their ears, related that he had seen someone of angelic face and dress entering the church and stretching out his hand to him, at the sight of whom he had stood up on his feet, not without exceeding pain of the sinews and joints. And so, restored to health, he who before had been carried by the help of others now began, giving thanks, to make his way on his own steps, leaving in that place the astonishment of a huge miracle, with the greatest zeal and love of the monastic purpose. In this manner, the state of the first going astray of the monastery of Der having been reformed for the better by the merits of the glorious Martyr Bercharius, it held inflexibly, through very many rolls of times, the path of sacred religion and the glory of its ancient beauty. But, many wrongly turning the tranquillity of so delightful a peace to the increase of impiety, the severity of chastisement again exposes to the rage of the Huns the devastation of the Christian people: Neustria and the greater part of the Gallic kingdom being especially given over to slaughter. Times of such misfortune were hindered by the rule of Charles the Younger, who was known by the name of the Simple, not so much from innocence as from sloth in every civil and military matter, wholly reproducing the manners of his father Louis, who on account of his excessive folly was called the Do-Nothing ^e.

[6] for fear of the Normans Therefore the army of the Huns, holding his rule of small account, as being incited by the just judgment of God, raging in every direction, overthrowing renowned cities from their foundations, destroyed with swords and fire the houses of prayer and the peoples of very many nations. And so the brethren of the aforesaid monastery of Der, terrified by frequent reports of so monstrous a cruelty, the Visigoths, who are also Normans, bursting forth too from the western parts under Hasting as leader, by common counsel, as they had heard the flocks of other churches had done, decide, taking with them the bones of Blessed Bercharius, to seek a hiding place by flight; and this they fix about the banks of the river Saône: which region in those times was reported free from every disquiet under the rule of Rudolf, son of the most noble Richard, duke of Burgundy, who was tenacious of justice and its most famous avenger. When therefore, deliberation having been had, the brethren were busy in a certain dwelling putting together in wrappings the church's goods and their own small bundles, of whatever kind, the sacristan of the monastery, hurrying elsewhere, forgetting a certain little cross, venerable to that same place from the time of St. Bercharius, left it for the moment hanging on the wall of that dwelling, when suddenly a fire kindled there, seizing a heap of straw near it, no one noticing, filled the house with flames so much that all possibility of entering was gone. And the brethren, running together from every side, making little of the burning of the dwelling, inasmuch as they were about to depart, lamented with tearful groaning that, their own faults requiring it, they had let go the advantage of the patronage left to them by the holy Martyr and preserved thus far through many perils of storms, demanding with complaining voices that it be restored to them by the Blessed patron, even for the solace of their exultation.

[7] the monks of Der flee into Burgundy, Nor was the presence of the loving father lacking, to console with his wonted clemency those who were most sorrowful: for the beams and walls of the house having been consumed in the fire, the little cross was found upon the burning coals so unharmed that even the slender cord woven with gold, by which it had thus far been hung, was wholly untouched by the force of the fire. The sorrow of the brethren being gladdened by this happy omen, feeling that the protection of their eminent protector was with them, and having gained the hope of returning some day, they sought the more eagerly the places of refuge decided upon. But how great miracles, and in what places, this holy father wrought by divine condescension, no scrap of ancient antiquity has related to our memory: only

our predecessors have testified to us, with the innumerable concurring witness of men of old, that there were innumerable ones, both along the spaces of the journey and in the place of the appointed dwelling. Fired by the most celebrated report of these, the said prince Rudolf, being about to take up the insignia of the whole empire of the Franks, went as a suppliant to the very place of the Relics of the Blessed Martyr, committing himself and his good fortune to his suffrages: and having been presented with many gifts, he relieved the necessities of the brethren with very many largesses, and, consoling them most kindly, promised them the hope of returning speedily and prosperously, with the help of God and of the holy Martyr and with the aid of his own labour; which by God's favour happily came to pass. For the same said prince, being about to bring help to the aforesaid calamity, assumed the empire of the Franks, by no means tyrannically, but by the predestination of divine goodness on account of the merit of his uprightness, elected by the bishops and nobles of the whole Gallic kingdom, to drive thence the rage of pagan perversity. And so, through fear of his power, all barbaric fierceness being forthwith terrified, the tranquillity of peace being restored, they take the boldness of returning to their own who, from fear of the pagans, had been scattered and sought various places of exile.

[8] and, the enemies being driven off, they return to Der. The flock also of the church of Der, having joined to itself the company of the brethren of the monastery of Fossés, who, fleeing thither for fear of the slaughter mentioned above, had brought with them the bones of Maurus, Confessor of Christ ^f, with like counsel undertake the journey of returning home, going on together and celebrating the divine offices together, until in the progress of the journey they reached the place where they parted from one another, the borders of Der and of Champagne. Therefore, a very great crowd of priests and many clerics going to meet the arrival of the most precious Martyr, and his household, which had been scattered in every direction, running back from every side, the eminent protector of his homeland is received at the threshold of the temple which he had built while living in honour of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. This, uncultivated through long desolation, with thistles and brambles too bristling around the altars, the brethren and servants, clearing it on every side, with the glory of great praise again lay up in it the bones of the holy pastor on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November. This day was held most celebrated in that place from of old, by the anniversary of the dedication of the same basilica, the work of Bl. Bercharius himself, consecrated by God's ordinance in honour and name of the Holy Saviour. The solemnity of the aforesaid day being thus doubled, it was decreed by the authority of the priests present that on that very day the birthday * of the passion of the glorious Martyr Bercharius should be perpetually celebrated, which is known to have occurred when the paschal festival was at hand, for which reason it remained uncelebrated according to the custom of the Christian religion. Hence grew up the joy of this illustrious celebration, by which the times of our age are gladdened up to now.

ANNOTATIONS.

* Adsonis Adso

* proditionis betrayal

* insimulque and at the same time

* permulta very many A.

* perhaps exulationis exile

* natale birthday A.

Chap. II. The restoration of the monastery of Der, and the series of abbots.

Discipline having collapsed at Der These things having been touched upon briefly, let there be written down more quickly the series of the slothful times following these, which ignorance and neglect of the sacred order so clouded that the cenobites of this place of which we treat publicly had wives within the cloisters of the monastery, celebrating the solemnities of weddings, and took to themselves sons-in-law and fathers-in-law from every side; distributing the ornaments of the house or the estates acquired anciently from every side with the greatest labour through the zeal of good men. Hence they came to such sloth of rusticity that, spurning military expeditions and the sight of the royal and priestly assembly, not so much from zeal for the sacred order as from the pleasure of idle leisure, they preferred to lose irrecoverably, to be distributed among neighbouring soldiers, the sum of one thousand five hundred and fifty manses, with the appurtenances belonging to them, namely of forests, pasture and agriculture. They were nevertheless subject to the lordship of abbots favourable to them, whose names too, since their records are unspeakable, have been erased from our memory ^a, except the last but one of them, the lord Alard, who was succeeded by the plague of so great a perversity, the lord Benzo, justly thrust out of that monastery. That his expulsion therefore, and the restoration, inward and outward, of the same monastery by the repeated predestination of the Almighty, may appear the more clearly, let the very great praises of the memorable deeds of the most excellent King Rudolf, mentioned above, be brought forward. For the rule of our most holy father Benedict, as yet unheard of by the men of the empire of the Franks ^b, poured forth the radiance of its brightness upon very many Churches through the most skilful industry of this prince. Those, however, who in those times displayed some sort of monastic garb protected themselves with some slight custom of the once most famous name of Luxeuil.

[10] is restored, the rule of St. Benedict being introduced, But the most prudent king, to adorn the rights of the government conferred on him by God, as he was an invincible follower of justice, so being an inflexible restorer of the churches, by no means suffering monks who wore a shadowy habit to wander any longer without any teaching, handed over the monastery of Fleury, distinguished by the Relics of the body of the most loving father of monks Benedict, to be corrected by St. Odo, abbot of the monastery of Cluny ^c. And the glorious abbot, ordering most religiously the aforesaid place, adopted for himself by St. Benedict, as is read in his deeds, first brought to the same place the little book of the rule of the same father. Afterwards, roused by the most celebrated fame of so great a matter, the lord Gauzelin, most noble bishop of the city of the Leuci ^d, went to the aforesaid place to inspect the order of religion reported to him by rumour, and returning thence, solicitous for the flock committed to him by God, bringing with him a description of the whole monastic way of life which he had seen there most religious, and also the aforesaid rule of the blessed father, he first showed to the city of Toul the renewal of the monastic purpose. Relying therefore on the manifold lessons of divine institution, the most wise bishop, prudent men having been gathered from every side, rendered the monastery of St. Aper, situated in the suburb of Toul ^e, vigorously imbued with regular disciplines, to be of profit to the advantage of many, most seemly illustrious.

[11] and the nefarious abbot Benzo being expelled; Hence therefore, the zeal of sacred religion blazing up round about, even tyrannical princes shuddering at the disordered acts of the inhabitants of the monastery of Der, by the equal consent of the whole region, the lord Benzo, the aforesaid abbot, thrust out from there, was compelled to make for (over which he presided in the place of abbot) the cell of Bobinus of the German Island, in the suburb of Augusta of the Tricasses ^f. As he was about to depart, however, at the urging of wicked clients, he took with him all the privileges and some of the ornaments of the church hateful to him: and his monks fleeing in different directions for fear of the hated rule, there succeeded brethren brought from the monastery of St. Aper: who display the memory of their prudence to our age up to now even by a shrewd ordering of ecclesiastical volumes. But by what

authors they were brought in, and the former expelled, I have forborne to write: lest I should seem at any time to have furnished fuel for an inept controversy. But who, and of what kind, they were by whose excellent zeal the same place, after the harshness of so great a winter, flourished as though growing green again, I have decided to set forth in writing, that those who come after may know of how great goodness were those whom the compassion of the venerable Bercharius foreordained as pastors thereafter, and through these, to his happy fold.

[12] to whom Alberic succeeds: The first of them, then, who shone forth was the lord Alberic, born of most noble parentage, a native of Reims, and a monk of St. Aper of Toul, who after the aforesaid Benzo, as befitted his goodness, took with the pastoral government the name of abbot, having adopted for himself, as a supplement of all help, the lord Asso already mentioned and to be recalled very often, conspicuous for philosophical learning and uprightness of life. He, sprung from very rich and noble parents in the land of the Jura, most fully imbued at Luxeuil with the various studies of the literary art, the bishop and clergy of Toul, clearly recognizing him in the first flower of youth abounding in the word of holy learning with the purity of an innocent life, drew him out of the Vosges by many supplications and set him up in the city of Toul for the teaching of the sacred order, as the light of a lamp upon the stand of a candlestick. There, for some rolls of times, toiling in various exercises of the divine precept, after the very great instruction of many, again a brightness of divine splendour, namely Asso, is set against the mists of Der to be driven away, for planting the seedlings of heavenly service. There afterwards, the lord Alberic departing this life, having been made abbot, reckoning the basilica of the Holy Apostles formerly built by Bl. Bercharius very small, he laid the most ample foundations of the very great temple which we now frequent. Two estates, Dreia ^g and that which is called the monastery of the Maidens, lost through the carelessness of his predecessors, their peasants, with rustic rage, being as they still are of the worst training, inflicting many injuries on the household of the Saint near them, he restored to his own church with the co-operation of Heribert, count of Troyes, at the expense of a price of no small amount, removing from them and from many others most importunate exactions imposed by tyrannical force.

[13] whom Adso receives, With the same count's aid too, he recovered all the privileges of the same place, which we related above had been carried off by stealth by the lord Benso to the place of the German Island, through the munificence of the lord Odo, abbot of that place, at whose prayers this most famous Asso wrote out in most truthful discourse, in a simple style, the Life of Frodobert, Confessor of Christ, first restorer and abbot of that monastery. He also, at the prayers and command of St. Gerard, bishop of the city of Toul ^h, most eloquently composed the Life of Bl. Mansuetus ⁱ, first bishop of that city, sent by Peter the Apostle. The deeds also of St. Basolus ^k the Confessor, with eloquent prefaces placed before them, together with the sequence of miracles charmingly set forth, he set out clearly, and this not presumptuously, but being requested by the wise Gerbert, then archbishop of the city of Reims ^l, and by a most illustrious man of the same name as himself, namely Asso, abbot of the monastery of the aforesaid Confessor. Whose tomb, when he died not long afterwards, he honoured, by grace of special love, with his own verses, saying among other things:

O happy Asso, Asso has built for you this inscription.

He moreover composed several little works in verse, and also some songs of hymns, elucidating the Ambrosian hymns with little glosses. But he also ennobled in heroic verse the second book of the dialogues of St. Pope Gregory, namely the deeds of the father of holy monks, Benedict, in every way more excellent than the poems of the ancient poets, overcome by the supplication of Abbo, very familiar to him, abbot ^m of the above-written monastery of Fleury, a man of the greatest prudence, who is known to have fallen innocent by the sword. But the deeds of this most loving holy protector of ours Bercharius, last of all, adorning them as far as he could with the charm of conspicuous eloquence, he spread through the borders of all Gaul, which until then were held written out uncouthly and hidden.

[14] whose deeds are related, Nor did he profit only monastic communities, but also very many clerical churches; among other benefits he handed down the modes and hours of prayers and of manifold psalmody, both in summer and in winter or in Lent, as the clergy of the Church of Troyes openly testifies up to now by words and affection. Its bishop at that time, Manasses ⁿ, cherished this abbot with wonderful affection, committing himself and the acts of his own diocese to his industry. This bishop's brother, Hilduin by name, at that time count of Arcis in Champagne, had committed many cruel crimes through military audacity. Him the most loving Asso so pursued with the words of holy preaching, in which he was most abundant, that he compelled him, come back to himself, to leave all things and to profess the labour of the journey to Jerusalem, giving himself to him as companion in undergoing so great a labour, for the sake of most loving consolation, relating the acts of Bl. Bercharius: who, going to Jerusalem, is said to have taken with him Waimer, guilty of the torments of St. Leodegar ^o. And so, by the publication of a report of this kind, many illustrious men having been roused, by the determination of this father a day is decided, places suitable for all are arranged for following or awaiting the most learned Asso, the famous standard-bearer of a work attempted by few. Therefore in the year of the incarnate Word 992 the loving father, bidding farewell to his dearest sons and brethren, very many of whom had been gathered there for this purpose, weeping abundantly, all having been kissed, followed by the huge wailing and groaning of all, enters on the way of the journey to the earthly Jerusalem, the doors of our mother, the heavenly Sion, being already opened to him.

[15] Adso having died And there followed him from the monastery a certain brother and servants as far as the embarkation on the sea, to carry back thence to the rest the consoling words of the father. He, however, sent back from there not only words but letters written with his own hand, intimating that on the day of the letters' dating he had entered the sea, heading for the port of the Babylonian city. But the condescension of the Almighty calls him, hastening to greater contests, to the prize of heavenly reward: for on the sea itself, seized by the languor of his last departure, he began to be pressed by the sobs of the final agony, yet his tongue remained unrecoverable, unmoved from consoling his companions, by no means ceasing from the praises of the most loving Redeemer, to whose keeping commending his weeping companions, he sent his blessed soul from the stern of exultation to the joys of the heavenly homeland. The body of this dead man his companions, illustrious men conscious of his holiness, by no means suffered to be given to the waves of the sea, as is the custom, but carrying it with them with the greatest honour for four days, on the fifth day, having put in by a prosperous course at the port of the island which is called Astilia [p], they laid it there in a most seemly mausoleum, as was fitting. Thence, very many of the same company voluntarily undergoing perpetual exile, some, having completed the labour of the wished-for journey, returning, brought to his most sorrowful disciples the day of death and place of burial and the last commands of the long-awaited father.

[16] Bruno succeeds. The preceding things having been briefly run through, it has pleased me to linger a little on the praises of this blessed man, because he, happy with every happiness, depicted in his own writings the deeds of many Saints, and from his entrance into this place with the lord Alberic this church lacked every unhappiness mentioned above; nor will I say only that it lacked it, but, which I would I may say with happy omen, I testify that it was increased with the honour of every adornment up to the departure of the lord Bruno, the seventh abbot from the venerable Alberic, who governed it honourably for seven lustra of years. This most prudent man was ordained at Rome by St. Pope Leo IX, presented with his surname [r], with the pastoral staff, and with a blessing worthy of so great a father. He also, among many memorable works of his sagacity, often attending the Roman councils, archbishops of great authority favouring his uprightness, Halinard of Lyons, Hugh of Besançon [s], and Mainard of Sens, and very many others of the priests, was the first, after the times of the unhappiness mentioned above, to restore to his place, whose right it was, the annual rent of the estate of Diseiacum. Enjoying also a seemly familiarity with the successors of the above-named St. Pope Leo, namely Stephen, Nicholas, Victor and Alexander, he prudently laid up in the archives of this place, solicitous for the age to come after him, very many ancient privileges and many modern ones strengthened by the confirmation of their authority. Driven by his commands frequently repeated, I have taken up this little work, a page mute as to the name of its author, which, as I think, stands for some as excessively over-talkative with the chatter of inept speech [t]. But I have knowingly preferred to lie open to the guffaws of mockers rather than not fulfil the orders of so great a father concerning the miracles of Bl. Bercharius, very many of which, seen by himself or handed down by those who saw them or supported by the testimony of faithful and truthful men, he often recounting, likewise showed some noted by his own hands on slips. For their sake I have said many less useful things by way of preface, namely by way of excuse why few things were handed down to memory before the times of the often-to-be-remembered Asso, from whose rule, since we begin the beginning of our narration, let the miracles done in his lifetime be first recounted.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. The island of Astilia we know from the Acts of St. Bercharius alone; the authors of the Literary History of France Literary History of France, vol. VI, p. 475. suspect it to be Astypalaea, today Stampalia, an island of the archipelago.

r. Bruno, called Wandelger before his blessing, was presented with the pastoral staff by St. Leo IX on the Kalends of May in the year 1050 Gallia Christiana, vol. IX, col. 917..

s. Besançon was called Chrysopolis in the Middle Ages: for the origin of the name see Adrien de Valois, Notitia of Gaul, under Vesuntio.

t. By these words, as I forewarned in the Preliminary Commentary, no. 17, we have the age of the Anonymous indicated.

* Domno the lord A.

* Domno the lord A.

Chap. III. The miracles of St. Bercharius.

Count Heribert is healed; Count Heribert, who was surnamed the Old, of whom we made mention above ^a, once incurred the very great discomfort of a severe fever, and while he laboured for a long time under its heats and chills, he sought the help of very many Saints, that by their merits he might be able to obtain some remedy; he sought the suffrages of the Saints at Paris, at Metz, at Troyes, going also to the sepulchres of St. Remigius and of Bl. Memmius ^b, and visited the places of other Saints too, to whose merits it was not pleasing that they should bestow the aid of that healing. At last he came to Vitry, exceedingly afflicted, hoping for the help of the Lord through the power of His nail which is kept there. But our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not even thus grant him health, inspired him to ask, through the intervention of the father Bercharius, so often to be proclaimed, the solace of the prayers of the brethren of this place. Sending therefore to the great abbot Asso, he beseeches that both he himself and the whole congregation would implore for him the merit of God and of the holy Martyr, since he hoped for no other help for his life any longer, nor had he any means of coming to the threshold of St. Bercharius. The memorable Asso, kindly receiving this embassy, since, as is still plainly evident, the same prince looked after the interests of this place as if they were his own, summoned the whole congregation and decided that they should pour forth special prayer for him that night, and on the morrow pay likewise for him the celebration of the morning Mass. The abbot too, most devoted to God, Mass having been performed, washing the chain of St. Peter with some part of the Relics of the holy Martyr, sent it to him in a very small vessel to drink. As soon as he tasted that washing, then, he is seized by sleep, and rising after a long rest, with no one prompting, he asked for food, restored thenceforth to health. And he, like the Samaritan rendering thanks to God, in memory of so great a benefit gave to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and to Bl. Bercharius the Martyr the half of the land which we have, Ulceniae, going thither himself, and for the confirmation of the largess he had himself put out from there by one of our monks named Albuin ^c.

[18] a rustic plunderer is punished: It has been related above that through the zeal of the memorable Asso, and with the help of the already mentioned Count Heribert, two estates were restored to the lordship of this church, that is, Dreia and the monastery of the Maidens, near which is the place of a very small island called from of old Mangisvillare. There Bl. Bercharius, eager for the solitary life, once built the first church in honour of St. Albinus, as he surveyed the hidden places of the forest of Der; where afterwards, avoiding the crowds of seculars, he often poured out to God offerings * of prayers of thanksgiving, being accustomed to pass the night there with his disciples, if it ever happened that, for the sake of some necessity, he stayed near the monastery of the Maidens, built by him in the estate of that name. But, sins pressing upon it, that monastery of nuns was afterwards brought to nothing, and that church reduced utterly to nothing, yet the place was not wholly desolate of the largess of heavenly gifts: for a certain peasant of the estate of the monastery of the Maidens, named Vulfarus, seeing that by the zeal of the venerable Asso stones were being gathered from every side for the enlargement of this temple, making little, as being an outsider, of the lordship of the monks, harnessed four pairs of oxen to a wagon and set out to carry away the stone of the altar of the church of the aforesaid island. Having placed this then on the wagon, returning, he came to the ford by which he had entered, and at once the oxen were fixed by so great a weight that they could not at all draw it to the water: the peasant therefore shouts, driving the oxen with goad and cudgels, but by no means succeeds: wishing to turn the animals to the right or to the left, not even so does he obtain any possibility of accomplishing it. At this deed many of the said estate, coming together, wondered at this matter, and, divinely inspired, protested that God did not will that the altar built by the work of His servant could be taken from that place: which the peasant hearing, turned toward the east, and promises God and St. Bercharius that he will put the stone back in its own place, if by their will the animals should recover their lost power of going. Saying this, he shakes the oxen, and at once you would have seen them in wonderful manner return backward more quickly than they had before done on no straight way, and so the altar was restored to its place. Thereafter the Lord began to work many miracles there and the place began to be held in veneration: on the occasion, and by the work, of the abbot Asso, by which the aforesaid estates were restored to the dominion of this place. When, God so disposing, in the time of the lord Asso this monastery began to sprout, so that it was again raised up as though growing green, as we have often brought forward above, not only did the estates begin to be inhabited again, but also in places and woodlands where they had never been, peasants, who were flowing together from every side, began to become dwellers.

[19] a blind woman receives sight: And so about that time a certain homestead was being built on the river Soulaine ^d above Lutosae, which is still called, from the name of its first inhabitant, Haraoth's homestead. A certain widow dwelling there among the first inhabitants had a blind daughter. And it came to pass that they were advised by knowing neighbours to hasten to the church of Lutosae, which St. Bercharius built in honour of St. Martin, to implore the mercy of the Lord, and also of St. Bercharius its very builder, and of St. Martin the Confessor, to whose name and honour the Blessed Martyr had handed it over by dedication. The mother, as soon as she learned this, being about to make for the church on the appointed day, prepared a candle which her daughter, full of faith, should carry there. When, then, going on, they had come to the door of the church, the blind daughter, who was led by her mother, beholds the candle which she was carrying in her hands divinely kindled. And crying out she says to her mother: Mother, my candle is lit; the mother, looking, sees the flame of the candle, and with exultation asks her daughter: Most tender daughter, how do you know? and she: Because, lady, I see well. Then both, an offering having been made and prayer poured out to the Martyr of Christ and to the holy Confessor, rejoicing and giving thanks to God, returned home. And that the maiden might be proved to have been restored to health by both intercessors, she openly showed that she had there received the gift of a twofold grace, namely the restoration of light and the perpetual keeping of virginity; for, having most perfectly obtained the light, she received the sacred veil, which she kept most devoutly for many years until her death.

[20] one insulting St. Bercharius, The place called Monasteriolus, with the church which Bl. Bercharius had built there in honour of St. Maurice, had in his times been so brought to nothing that no covering happened to remain even upon the stone of the most sacred altar: nor was it even frequented by anyone; but the care and constant zeal of those renewing the workshops of this monastery had found not far from it a path by which stones could more easily be brought. That little place itself was surrounded on every side by a great forest, and within, around the aforesaid stone, grasses mixed with shrubs abounded. In this estate of the monastery, moreover, there had been a certain little man called John, having a son of bad upbringing named Dagobert. He, one day, while for the sake of guarding he was following the animals about the borders of the aforesaid place, the other shepherds following the herd, which was penetrating the inner parts on account of their known fertility, lest anything should be led away, the wicked youth, remaining alone, climbed up on the sacred altar, and, touching it with the iron which he carried, said: Here shall be my station, and my beast, whose return I shall not have found, I shall irreverently demand from this Saint. When his companions found him persisting in such madness, they with difficulty prevailed by exceeding supplication that he should come down. But as the sick-minded man came down from the summit of so great a blessing, so great a force of exceeding tribulation came up upon him that he could only return to his parents' dwelling by the support of his fellows, and, worn down for very many days by deadly anguish, and deprived of his eyes, after a short space granted for lamenting his depravity, he received the end of the present life. Thereafter, the density of the trees having been rooted out, that oratory is rebuilt, used up to now by the assiduity of the inhabitants, and those who seek it with complete devotion enjoy there the Lord's mercy.

[21] and another violating an altar is punished: No less wonderful was what happened concerning the stone of the altar which the honeyed father and pastor Bercharius dedicated in honour of St. Sulpicius. There had been a certain man of the military order, generous, excelling in very many possessions, among which he possessed a certain estate called Cryptae, flourishing with every convenience and adorned with the fruitfulness which simple rural dwelling requires. But this troubled him harshly, that though all the conveniences of earthly things were present there, there had never been a tabernacle of Christ there, where first the kingdom of God might be sought; wishing therefore to build a basilica on it, he orders the aforesaid altar to be carried there. And the place where the church of the already mentioned St. Sulpicius had been is near the little village which is called Tiliolus ^e, consisting of a manse of this monastery, but its whole construction, except the said stone, had been wiped out under the sky. And so, a wagon having been brought, a certain peasant, placing the stone upon it, when he had begun to lead the oxen back to the path, after a short space the oxen, going off the track, no longer

were able to go forward; and the wretched little man, exceedingly wearied, crying out very often and goading them, although he made little progress, in order to obtain rest climbed up and sat on top, not knowing that he was exposing himself rather to pain than freeing himself from fatigue; for at once he is beset by a most grievous pain, and the oxen too could not move their feet from the place. So at length, convinced, he got down, set down the stone, and, leaving it in that place, made for home, and, wasted by that languor for some time, lost his life; the animals too were consumed by plague. And the lord who had ordered these things, seeing what had happened, neither removed the stone from the place where it had been thrown down, nor began the oratory which he had arranged to build, fearing that it would displease the Almighty: but after 50 years and more the son of the aforesaid rich man built a church in the little village which is called Villaris, and brought the often-mentioned stone there, and from it set up an altar there.

[22] St. Bercharius, guardian of his own. The most faithful abbot of God Berengar, most worthy successor of the memorable Asso, hearing that certain men from the parts of the people of Toul wished, from greed of booty and spoils, to break into this monastery, ordered that the courtyard of the monastery itself be strongly fortified, and that watchmen going round it should keep up the watch every night. But after some nights, when the watchmen had gone round the circuit of the courtyard and had halted at the part of the eastern window beside the altar of St. Mary, shouting and sounding trumpets, as is the custom of camps, behold a voice from the part of the temple, crying out, sounded upon the watchmen: Who are you, pressing upon God and His Saints in this place with such disquiet, or who ordered that these watches should be kept around the tabernacle of God? They, looking back toward the sanctuary, testified that they had seen the figure of the speaker surrounded with immense brightness, and for exceeding fear they dared answer nothing else than that their Lord abbot had ordered these things. To whom the voice of the speaker added such words: Say to the abbot: Can He not still prevail to keep this place who has protected it up to now? See that, coming together any more, you be not found here in such fashion. These things said, he disappeared, and they, scarcely having breath, at once fled away. One of these was called Grimold of Trois-Fontaines, the other John. This John, living about 30 years afterwards, was worthy to narrate to many this consolation of the holy Martyr to his servants. The other, Grimold, seized with sickness through fear of that vision, ended his life within the year. In the same place no watchman was thereafter appointed, and those who at that time wished to break in here, coming together near the city of Toul and taking up lodgings, a quarrel having arisen among them, many of them perished there by the sword, for which cause the rest, exceedingly disturbed, returned to their own. After some days too their leader was deprived of life, and so God protected this place on account of the merit of His servant and our guardian Bercharius.

ANNOTATIONS.

* gratarum of thanks A.

Chap. IV. The narrative of the miracles of St. Bercharius is continued.

A lame man is healed; A certain lame man dwelling beyond the river Meuse, named Girard, is taught by a vision that, if he wished to recover health, he should quickly seek the suffrage of Bercharius, beloved of God. While he was keeping to the wished-for path by asking his way, he came to the dwelling of a certain cleric of ours who was called Bruno, and disclosed to him the cause of his coming; who, rejoicing, brought the aforesaid weak man to the monastery on the fifteenth day before the feast of the Lord's Ascension; then through the three days before the Ascension, on which the litany is wont to be made, he followed beyond his strength the crowd of monks, always praying the merits of the Blessed who were being carried: this too he performed no less devoutly on the day of the Ascension. But on the sixth weekday and on Saturday he was so wearied that he could not go out of the bed of the guest-house which Abbot Bruno, full of God, had assigned him. In the night, therefore, which the Lord's day followed, he is asked again why he had left the monastery, and is ordered to go back at once. When morning came, he made for the church, and did not depart from it until the public Mass. And while the Gospel was being read, he began to tremble and little by little to utter vehement lamentations; for when they had come to the Secret, while he was being urged to be quiet out of reverence for the Mass, he thundered with these words: Behold I am dying, behold I am dying. For, lying on the ground beside the entrance of the right-hand choir, his sinews were being straightened, and, as though he had come out of water, sweat flowed over his body: with such suffering indeed was he troubled until Compline; then at last he was wholly stretched out, but remained as though at the departure of the spirit: which one of our seniors, Odo by name, seeing, touched with trust in God and strong in body, took up the half-dead man lying there who had been lame, and laid him before the altar of St. Peter. Then after a little space, when the man came to himself, the said senior began to lead him, teaching him to walk like a mother. And as the seniors were singing praises to good Jesus for this, the whole suburb ran together, and so great an ardour grew up in them that, as though they beheld our Lord the Saviour present, each strove to bring an offering to the sacred altar. And whoever, ignorant of these things, came up and had brought nothing besides the garment with which he was covered, at once offered it to God and His Apostles for the love of His Martyr Bercharius. We can by no means express wholly how vehement a joy there was on that very day, but the abundance of tears which proceeded from the joy of the monks, and the concourse of the peoples with which it overflowed, bore testimony that the paralytic of whom it is read in the gospel was present ^a… Whence so great a fragrance spread from here that before night much people came from many parts, both from the parts of Champagne and from Bar-sur-Aube ^b; from the part of which, namely from the village which is called Salex ^c, there came a certain blind woman named Lamfendis, who at once obtained light, and she, for the devotion of so great a gift, received the sacred veil, which she wore magnificently until her death. There came together also a great multitude of the weak, namely of the blind, the lame, the burning, and other sick, of whom many obtained the grace of sight, of walking, of the extinguishing of the burning, and of various health; yet there was no one of the others who did not feel some remedy. And this Girard remained in this place for many years, then received the monastic habit.

[24] Der protected by St. Bercharius On another day a certain Rainard of Villa Carceralis Curtis ^d stood there, whose whole right thumb had already burned. He invoked the most dear athlete of the Lord Bercharius for succour, and at once obtains the extinguishing of the burning. Crispiacus ^e is the name of a certain estate, situated on the border of the castle of Brienne and the forest of Der; this was from of old a nurse of robbers, being mixed in with the forest, which, spread out immensely round about, offers welcome hiding places to men of this pursuit. A certain knight of this estate, then, Berterus by name, with a band of his accomplices, having secretly attacked a certain estate on the river Marne in the county of Perthois ^f, drove off from there a very great multitude of swine. The men of that region, pursuing them, being by no means able to overtake them, returned by this estate and began to demand their swine from the men of this holy Martyr, asserting that they had lost them through their leading. And when these contradicted them, they affirm that they will return there, and will leave nothing in this whole estate, no, not even the body of St. Bercharius. Having therefore made very many most insane threats, they fix a day of return, meanwhile binding by oath all the tillers of the aforesaid region of Perthois to the plundering of this place. At length, coming together at the appointed time, they chose seven hundred out of so great a multitude, ordering the rest to return to their own, keeping, as we have said, the seven hundred stronger ones, not for fear of any of ours, but to show the greatness of their power, and they set over themselves a certain man named Badinus. It is announced beforehand to the brethren of this church, whence they were not a little terrified; and they were the more distressed on this account, that the presence of the venerable Lord Berengar ^g the abbot was absent: for the abbot William, most devoted to God, had with wonderful work renewed the church of St. Benignus of Dijon in religion and in walls, by the help of Bruno, bishop of Langres, and had invited to its dedication the aforesaid father, very familiar to him.

[25] protected. The brethren therefore, in the only counsel they found, an embassy having been sent, prayed the enemy to keep quiet, promising that, the father having returned, on an appointed day they and their people would lawfully show them every right: they themselves meanwhile, beseeching with psalms and prayers the known help of the holy Martyr, made known to their very small people by the sound of the church bells the coming of the enemy. But the adversaries, spurning the most humble embassy of the brethren, and being made fiercer on that account, approaching with a mighty roar, occupied the hill where there is now a vineyard near the church of St. Remigius, which, on account of the battle fought there, the inhabitants call up to now Castellio. But our countryfolk, about twenty, animated by the Spirit of the Lord, breaking through the obstacles by which they were held back by the monks, who feared their destruction, making little of the multitude of the enemy, being about to join battle, rush upon them, there coming up from outside to their help seven horsemen, at that time dwelling in this estate; for the other horsemen and servants had gone in different directions for the sake of attendance on the brethren and the abbot. And so, before they met, a huge thickness of smoke appeared between the two sides; which the adversaries seeing, they neglected to run against the fewness of ours, but, throwing upon them the staves which all of so great a multitude carried with their lances, they thought to strew them like dust: but God, who had animated the servants of His servants against His rebels, by the merits of the holy Martyr rendered them all so unharmed by that very hail of staves that so great a multitude of cudgels touched none of them. Made the more eager by this defence, ours, at once mingling with the adversaries, slay their leader written above, the rest falling like the leaves of the trees in the wind * in wintertime. Thus by the help of the Blessed Martyr, by the onset of twenty-seven men, seven hundred giving way, the nearest forest, which they thought would be of help to them as they fled, began, the fury of the Lord pressing upon them, to be a cause of destruction; for the branches falling on them from every side wounded very many, killing many; and some were so terrified by the groaning of the dying, by the fall of branches or leaves, that they strove rather to thrust themselves into the thickets than to take the way of flight. Terrified round about by the astonishment of so great a vengeance, therefore, the adversaries of this church allowed the household of the eminent protector Bercharius to be at rest for no small space of time.

[26] An apostate monk A certain brother called by name Hugo, whose wonderful vision, and at the same time the manifest deliverance, by the loving merits of Mary, the most loving Mother of God, and also of St. Bercharius the Martyr, from the very prisons of hell, we attempt to write, in the place ^h … under

the strenuous discipline of the monks, is said to have been offered to God as a boy ⁱ; whom from his first years the religion of his elders forbade to live as he pleased, but instructed not moderately in the various exercises of the arts, and he followed their right acts, willing or unwilling, up to the times of youthful age, when, as that age is wont, he sought to live too dissolutely, as he pleased. But since the practice of religion restrained such things by forbidding them, he held hateful what he ought piously to have loved, and, setting aside the company of the brethren with whom he had been brought up, he fled to Châlons. Gibuin, the bishop of that city at the time, having learned of his skill, kept him with grateful kindness, urging him to the renewing of the works of his church, which were clouded by the age of many times, granting him free judgment in the enjoyment of his means. But he, while he freely enjoyed the glory of this mortal life of this kind, began beyond measure to forget the life to come: but the most kind Lover, who wills all rather to be saved than to perish, wonderfully called him back, bound in the snares of death, by His most merciful goodness: for the aforesaid prelate, whose patronage he was enjoying, arranging to go to consecrate the walls of the temple of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of St. Bercharius the Martyr, whose first foundations, as we have said before, the venerable abbot Asso had laid, by God's ordaining took with him this familiar of his. And so the honourable abbot Berengar, perceiving by hearsay the skill of his studies, with his monks obtained from him by great supplication that he should be released to him. And when the bishop returned to the chair of his own see, the aforesaid abbot and the brethren decided that he, so favourably left to them, should stay in a remote lodging with things necessary for him, where, out of compassion providing him according to his wish with all things, even superfluous (which is grievous to say), they order him, as they knew he could, to make beautifully the form of the Lord's cross: but the Saviour of the world, who washed away the crimes of the world, did not suffer the image of His countenance to be formed with impunity by the neglected hands of him whom with long-suffering tolerance He had already long awaited: for while he was making the effigy of the cross, and was beautifully carving on it the image of the Redeemer suffering for the redemption of all, seized by a sharp languor he is brought to his last.

[27] brought back to a better way of life. But, oppressed by a scarcely bearable torment, he began with tearful supplications to implore the help of the brethren, that they should as quickly as possible renew him with the monastic habit, under which he confessed he had lived deceitfully like a wolf under a sheep's skin. The brethren therefore, sympathizing with his most vehement distress, filled, weeping, the lodging in which he lay languishing, and with fervent charity regularly granted what he had asked. But the devil, envious of all good things and seducer of souls, seeing the wretch now re-formed in the garments he had long foolishly spurned, having long complained of the injuries inflicted on him by the sacred order of monks, hateful to him, roared against him, renewing by many contrivances his deceitful and manifold ingenuity. At once, therefore, with an immense crowd of demons, two most foul ones are present, who, bursting with barbaric onset into the sick man's dwelling, strove, if it were possible, to tear violently the wretched soul from the body. While delays occurred in their contention, God protecting him, one of them reproached the other as to why they were granting a truce in seizing the soul for which they had come; and when he made in reply the answer that the most illustrious Martyr of God Bercharius, whose sacred bones were venerated buried there, had protected him, the other answered that he could not, since he saw him fortified with the viaticum of the Body of Christ, and defended by the prayers of the monks of that Martyr Bercharius. But while, the altercation being prolonged, they terrified the wretch with a horrible din, suddenly and wonderfully there appeared to the sick man himself, as he suffered and saw all these things, a hand alone, which by ineffable mercy made a division and a flight among them, thus by the imperious authority of God freeing one failed in strength: for the Blessed Mother of God, and truly Blessed, shining with every goodness, while with her most loving ears she attended to the complaints of the brethren, who were fortifying the departure of the sick man with prayers, did not delay to send the protection of her only Son to sustain the weakness of the infirm man. The Lady of the Archangels herself also came not long after, of her kindly goodness, manifestly to visit the dissolved limbs of the infirm man, lest the evil one should seize him whom Jesus Christ her Son had redeemed with His sacred blood: for on the title of the cross, which stood at the feet of the craftsman lying there, there suddenly appeared to shine an ethereal globe, wrapped in milky circles, and adorned in designated places with radiant stars. This was seen wonderfully, God co-operating, to be divided into two parts, and in its midst the queen of heaven to shine in a fine and ineffable garment, so that it was doubtful to no one that it was the Mother of God: at whose summit, while so holy a blessedness glittered, she made her descent through the midst of the cross from the top to the bottom, the way being paved with gold, seated (since she is lady) on her Son's throne. Then the most loving virgin deigned to strengthen the brother, worn down no less by the most grievous torments of languor than by the snares of the demons, with such words: Behold, wretched man, my Son, bent to mercy by my prayers and those of His servant Bercharius, has granted you a time of penance, that, returning to the place in which you were offered to God and His Saints, you may henceforth correct your life as is expedient. Saying this, stretching out the hand of mercy, the band of demons being thrown into confusion, she raised him up and left him in good health, and tearfully relating to the bystanders what he had suffered and seen.

ANNOTATIONS.

* fere about is lacking in A.

* irruerunt rushed A.

* vento in the wind is lacking in A.

* ministrantes ministering A.

* Salvatoris of the Saviour A.

Chap. V. Other miracles of St. Bercharius.

One doing servile work on a feast day is punished, and healed. It had been a holiday, or, as very many who survive from that time testify, the solemnity of the most holy Martyr of Jesus Christ, Lawrence, had filled the whole world with joy. On which day a certain pitiable little man, unknowing for himself, but living irrationally like an ass, enters a field of harvest into which to put his sickle, and while he was intent on cutting, one of the sheaves is fastened inside his hand, which he could in no way throw off, since he could neither open his hand nor dislodge one of the ears which the hardness had pressed into the joints of his hand. Terrified therefore by huge distress, he directs his steps to his dwelling, bearing wonder to the crowd of his neighbours, and about to display the confusion of the disobedience of those rebellious to God. He is encouraged therefore by the counsel of his neighbours, and is ordered to go round various places of the Saints. He sought St. Mammes ^a, the jewel of the monks of Langres, and Desiderius ^b, surrounded by a glorious band of Martyrs, and at the same time the heavenly Twins ^c, with the innumerable merits of the Saints round about. Then he went over at Troyes the sepulchres of the holy Martyrs Savinian ^d and Patroclus ^e, with many others whom it would take long to enumerate, among whom, as the morning star in heaven, shines the happy bishop Lupus ^f. These and other spirits of the Saints, as they had heard it deliberated before the sight of the supreme divinity, since it was the office of another, deferred hearing this man's prayers. But our Jesus, who magnifies the band of His own, by His goodness moved this man's mind to beseech for this necessity the merits of Bercharius, not the least of the Martyrs: for when, wishing to enter the courtyard, he had come to the bridge which gives entrance to those coming from the side of the meadows, and was trying to climb up on it, the evening bell by chance rang on the spot, and the distressed man cried out thus with his mouth: Lord St. Bercharius, succour this my necessity. At this voice the hand is loosened, and the ears fall to the ground, which those following gathered, and with the gladdened man carried them to the seniors, who, when they had to sing the evening hymns, began to sing the morning ones, namely the Te Deum laudamus. And the ears hung for a long time in this church in testimony of this matter, and in the place where they fell, against the will of their bearer, a cross remained erected up to these our times.

[29] Milo the robber punished. A certain knight named Milo invaded land of the treasury of St. Peter at Balduficurtis ^g, to hold it by reason of advocacy, which he oppressed rather than defended. Many times he is admonished concerning this, at the abbot's order, by the senior by whose providence the treasury was ruled; but when he showed no reverence to the heavenly honour, he is seized by a severe fever: and when he could obtain a remedy from no quarter, coming to the aid of the Blessed Father Bercharius, he confessed himself guilty and that he would not make the invasion of the possession: at once he recovered from the sickness: and after a little time he embraces what he had abandoned; the aforesaid pain, and a greater, seized him, and, as before, amendment having been promised, he rendered himself culpable before the Saint and obtained the grace of health: for the truth has said: He who seeks finds. He was pursuing death and found it; for a third time he swallowed up the goods of the Blessed Martyr, and a threefold pain wore him down. Compelled therefore, he restored to the Saint what he had invaded, and promised on oath that he would not do so any more: but God, as it is written, lest He should thereafter be mocked by him, grants him the end of living: but before he died he gave orders that his body should be carried to the mercy of the father, which was also done, and he was buried within the church. The church, receiving back its property, possessed it securely up to these our times, until Stephen, like very many things, obtained it by fraud.

[30] A blind man healed: The place of the fishpond, into which the impious Daguinus threw the little knife with which he had struck St. Bercharius, as though to hide it, had in ancient times been so consigned to oblivion that, covered * with earth, it was level with the plain of the whole cloister and with the meadow, nor did any of the very old seniors know it perfectly. Now there was a certain man in those very parts of Aquitaine from which our often-mentioned provider Bercharius took his origin, who, punished with blindness, was not a little distressed, asking with assiduous prayers to be pitied by almighty God. He is admonished, therefore, in sleep, to go to the monastery of St. Bercharius in the forest of Der, and there to search out where the iron of his slaying, thrown in, had floated; certain that from its water light could be restored to him,

his blindness being driven away. Animated by this vision, the aforesaid blind man, having entered on the journey commanded, came to this monastery, narrating to the brethren and the abbot what had been said to him: who replied that they did not know the place more certainly by any showing of the ancients. But he, full of faith, beseeches that he be led within the cloister, and that the place be pointed out to him, known or by some report. What need of more? Coming to the place, he began to dig the earth with his hands. The brethren, seeing the confidence of his mind, called the servants and ordered that the earth be dug for him. Not yet had the measure of three feet been dug out in the depth of the earth, and behold the blind man put his hand to the pit, and anointing the orbs of his eyes with the moist earth, at once received the long-desired light.

[31] one moving the Saint's Relics is rebuked. One night, when one of the brethren, namely the keeper of the church, had reclined his limbs on his bed, he began, thinking within himself, to turn over that if the body of the Saint, which lay upon a weak structure, should by chance fall from there, a huge sin would be upon all: struck hence with fear, at that same hour he goes out of bed, and, prepared with the greatest devotion, goes up to the holy altar and laid the bones of the blessed father upon it: and, prayer having been poured out and anxiety about a fall removed, he goes to sleep with security received. To him there is at once present the blessed father Bercharius, and, touching him, as he used to relate, with the staff which he held in his hand, with a menacing countenance, called him. The aforesaid keeper, looking at him, asks trembling: Who art thou, Lord? To whom the Blessed one, with rebuke, said this: I am he whose ashes you have laid upon the table of the body of our Creator and Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore rise in haste and carry my body thence to its former place. Or did you not know that the power of our Lord reigns everywhere, and that His guardianship is always over those who fear Him? Roused by this, the same senior puts the most holy limbs back in their former place at the command of him who ordered it: and because the time of night was pressing, he again seeks his couch to take sleep. Then a second time the blessed father Bercharius came to him, saying: Because you did these things with a simple mind, and because the order of your abbot had been given you that you should take care of sacred things, severity has given way: whence, confessing, reveal this to him, and at the same time, having taken the chastisement, by no means presume any other such thing.

[32] those translating the same are rebuked: There is a certain village not far from this monastery, whose name I do not now wish to designate, which was inhabited by no small number of dwellers and with every abundance: in which there was a certain priest in whom the intention arose of asking for Relics of this our father and protector Bercharius and laying them up in the basilica of the same village; and, distrusting that he could obtain this by his own seeking, he joined to himself for the furthering of so great a business a certain cleric dwelling in this suburb, who, if not by the name being published, is yet recognized as known to all by familiarity. And so, the Relics having been obtained, the priest carried them off and laid them up in the aforesaid church. In the following night, then, he who had returned having gained his wish, and the cleric who had been the one who obtained them, are struck in a vision with a mild correction, hearing that they had received what was very unworthy * of the blessing of so great a father, and had withdrawn it thence not by God's command. In the second night indeed they are admonished anew, and when they had been admonished in the third, they reckoned it as nothing. Behold, after they were shaken out of sleep, so great a disquiet pervaded them that by day no delight of eating came to them, and by night, as soon as they had admitted sleep to their eyes, a certain horror was present to both, by which they were not allowed to rest except for a moment, whence they were the more sharply worn down. When therefore they were held for eight days in such torment, the clerical person, compelled, sought the priest, and laid open what he had seen and suffered; who in turn confessed that he was suffering the same things, and inquires a fitting remedy for this calamity: whence neither of them reckoning anything more salutary than that the pledges of the blessed father should be restored: the second, however, restored them with enormous sadness. The cleric then, still putting off restoring them to their place, laid them up within the monastery: he returns home, therefore, as though he would now enjoy the wished-for health; but, as he himself testifies, he is troubled more than usual with the former discomfort. For, compelled by these distresses for some days, he points out in order to the sacristan whatever had happened to him with the priest, and whatever he alone had presumed, and how atrociously he is now worn down on that account. What more? Believe me most truly: there was more praying that they might be received back than at first asking that they might be granted. Both are restored: both the memorial of the blessed father, which is kept set apart up to today, and the office of lost health, showing the man well. And so after a few days the enemies of the lord of the estate burned the basilica, and then after some little time the inhabitants are rooted out even from the village itself, by the desert of certain presumptions of theirs.

[33] the body is solemnly carried to Aireyae, The glorious King Robert is known to have held a council at the estate called Aireyae ^h; where, since innumerable multitudes of common people of both sexes and of every age came together, to heap up also the devotion of the people setting out, very many bodies of Saints began to be brought by faithful men: among whose venerable pledges our seniors brought no unknown Relics of the sacred body of our patron, fittingly in a bier prepared for their translation. And it came to pass that our seniors made a complaint against a certain count, Landric by name, on account of the estates of our blessed protector which the aforesaid count had invaded: whereat, indignant, he thought to carry off the Relics of the most precious father, supposing that the most holy body was in the bier, as our men outwardly testified. Not fearing, then, the power of the king, since the king himself was gentlest above all, and was seen to overcome his subjects by mildness rather than fierceness: for that reason he busied himself to perpetrate the carrying off of the holy body, so that he might have occasion not to restore what had been unjustly seized, since he would possess the heir and the inheritance together. And after such great spaces of the journey they came to the water which is called Urmuntio ⁱ: before they had come to the castle of Florentinus they found the crossing difficult, for the bank of the water is found deep, and the bridge too most narrow even for a man alone, and therefore horsemen did not dare to take it up for crossing, lest perhaps it should slip from their shoulders: and the foot-men, who were wont to carry it, could not bring it over on account of the narrowness of the bridge, since the bier could not be carried by fewer than four foot-men.

[34] on which occasion a new miracle happened: While therefore they wished to consider how they might cross the course of that river, fear assailed them lest the enemy should pursue them, while, because of the burden of the bier, the water should drive back horsemen and foot-men. Then through our admirable father and protector ancient miracles, commanded by God, are repeated. For, as has been said, * when the bearers and followers of the Relics of the Saint were much and long troubled, one of them, like Moses of old, exhorted them, saying: Come, dearest fellow soldiers and most devoted servants of this most Blessed Lord of ours, let us pass on foot through the water, carrying across more securely on our shoulders the weight of such most precious merchandise. At his exhortation and the command of our God, leaving the bridge, and four foot-men of them placing the bier on their necks, they passed through the aforesaid river. And when they had been in the river up to their loins, they both came out without hindrance and were found more dried than they had been when they entered. Whence not only did exultation arise among our men, but also great praise from those who had joined themselves to the company of ours. No small multitude of those who heard also ran, even from the surrounding villages, to this miracle. At a certain time there was so very great a mortality of men that very many died on one day in one place. It came to pass that for this cause men of both dignities sought the suffrages of the Saints, whence many, desiring the aid of the father, asked that his most holy body should be brought to them. Among whom a certain powerful person obtained by his embassy that it should be carried above the Blaise ^k, whither he himself would come forward to meet it, a multitude of peoples accompanying. The limbs of the father to be glorified were carried there, where from every side both a multitude of people and a great devotion of comers rushed in. While the arrival of the aforesaid person was being awaited, he sent back word that it was not permitted him to go out to meet it; let them do about the return as the seniors wished. The Saint, however, having been guarded there for two nights, and venerably invoked to their help by those who flowed together, each returned to his own: but by the hidden judgment of God the end of life came for that man within eight days. The limbs of the Saint having been carried back, then, the intention came to the peasants of the estate to set up the sign of the Lord's Cross where the holy body had remained, in memory of so great a blessing, which they had felt through his merits: for, the ashes of the Saint having been brought, the very mortality of men fled. The timber was prepared, with whose weight ten oxen were laden. The tillers came, they raised the cross, but when raised it appeared slanting. Seeing which, the rustic band groaned, and one of them thundered with a great voice: If truly the body of so great a father was brought here, I shall set straight the wood of this cross; and so it was set straight, and what all were striving for, he alone set up.

[35] a blind woman enlightened: I by no means remember for what cause devotion compelled the whole congregation to make for the church of St. Mary which is at Summa Vera ^l, and to carry there the limbs of the father to be glorified, Bercharius: for they went on the sixth weekday of Pentecost. And when the prayer was finished, after the Antiphon which is begun at the entrance of the church, when the common people began to come bringing offerings to the altar, at once a huge wind came, with which there arose an extraordinary whirlwind. But the multitude of his * people which had remained outside the church, since not all had been able to enter, having fled hither and thither because of the whirlwind, a certain blind woman remains there, who at once was granted light. Then our seniors, when they wished according to custom to sing the prayers of the rogations, a clamour is raised by the people for the thing done, which compelled the melodies and prayers of the singers to be turned to jubilations of praises. For as they rose, all crying out to say: Te Deum laudamus, they also applauded to intone: Behold the Holy Mother of God has made known to the world that Bercharius, Martyr of God and our provider, served her Son with most pure and most chaste affection. That imperious mother too deservedly anticipates the entreaty of the poor, she who brought forth the fountain of all goodness; and she promises: Before you call upon me, I will say to you, behold I am here. For on account of the love of her most faithful servant and our most kind lord Bercharius, she did not suffer to endure long the cries of the people after the labour of so great a journey: happy the flock and people to whom such a father and pastor is granted. The melody of hymns and the Mass being then finished, with great veneration they who had come groaning carried back rejoicing the minister of God and our provider to his own seat.

[36] by the Saint's intercession A miracle which we have learned by the relation of our fathers was wrought by our good father Bercharius in ancient times, and which in our age, although in a dissimilar manner, yet by equal power and merit was done, we have seen with our present eyes; to those desiring to know it we offer it like a cup of the best wine: that to the moderns the same, if the devotion of the faithful shall demand it and the opportunity of the times shall require it, not

be doubted that it can be done in times to come. In our age, from almost the very days of the glorious Resurrection of the Lord up to the Birthday of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, as we believe, the sins of this world requiring it, the face of the sky was stretched out like brass, and the earth had hardened like the solidity of iron, so much that these two elements threatened death to mortals, by no means showing those things which ought to be shown by them at the proper time. All being therefore not a little terrified by this misfortune, the elders of the people of this church, gathered into one, seek the presence of the lord abbot Bruno, asking that the body of the blessed father Bercharius be granted them, so that it might be permitted them to carry it about through their fields and borders by serviceable bearing, that by his holy intervention heavenly propitiation might come to the help of the afflicted. Besought therefore by such prayer, nay overcome, the lord abbot with the seniors assented to them, and appointed that this should be done on the aforenamed day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. And when the day of this appointment came, and the jubilations of matins of the apostolic solemnity had been finished, with the command of the lord abbot certain of the brethren took down from its place of rest the bier containing the heavenly pearl, that it might be shown to the acclaiming people, to be carried, as has been prescribed.

[37] timely rain obtained. It is clear that there then befitted this Martyr of ours what is said of certain Saints, that their tongues were made the keys of heaven ^m, for that same night the sky began to be clouded over with clouds, and to pour drops of rain upon the earth. But lest the glorification of so great a light should be hidden from those dwelling in our age in the house of the Lord, but rather should be shown openly, as dawn grew light after the twilight, the ruddy sun fully brought its radiance upon this world. And at the third hour, at which the Holy Spirit is believed to have filled the minds of the faithful with His grace, many peoples are present in the forecourt and in the church, in the market place and through the crossways of the streets, beseeching that, the divine mercy looking upon them from heaven, they might deserve to carry the most holy limbs of their father, and by carrying them to obtain suffrages in the tribulation then present. Then, receiving from the brethren the gift of the Lord, longed for and at length bestowed, they go out of the church. The people, faithful in heart, run joyful in throngs, nor are fathers or mothers or the young lacking. The holy father is carried through the borders of his servants, and, knocking for them with prayer at the doors of sublime mercy, he at once obtains what was asked for the need of those who carried him. I shall sing wonders in words, and I wish to hand them down in writing. And while the holy father was being carried by the brethren and the peoples going before and following, the Almighty again began to cover the face of the sky with dark clouds, and as it were to threaten and say that He wished to rain but deferred it, lest He should put a hindrance before his beloved bearers with those attending. At length, the course of the devout procession being completed, when the people had filled the precincts of the temple, and silence having been made and the bells rung, the cantors had begun the introit of the Mass of the apostolic solemnity, behold the regard of heavenly mercy, which sent down the largess of its kindness. For the hardness of the heavens received a kindly command from more secret places, sending a sweet-flowing dew, by which the tenacity of the clouds, loosened, poured upon the earth in largess the abundance long denied, and the earth brought forth for the longing people an abundance of its fruits. By so many and such and so evident miracles, then, the Lord restrains, shuts, stopped the mouths of those who speak iniquity against the just in pride and abuse, bestowing in the great multitude of His sweetness what He had hidden for those who fear Him.

ANNOTATIONS.

* recta straight A.; perhaps injecta thrown upon

* the place is mutilated

* supply cum when

* sui [his] is lacking in A. and C.