ON ST. AVIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR, IN GAUL,
PERHAPS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY.
CRITICAL COLLECTION.
Her deeds little known; her cult in the former dioceses of Paris, Boulogne, Rouen, Vannes, Reims and others.
Avia, virgin and martyr, in Gaul. (S.)
BY V. D. B.
Papebroch had referred St. Avia among those passed over at the 2nd day of May, and had deferred her to the 21st day of October to be illustrated together with St. Ursula. Some make St. Avia a companion of St. Ursula, others a hermitess of Boulogne, But shortly afterwards, warned by Castellan that these things were not right, he put a few things about her on paper in the appendix to the same month of May Act. SS. volume VII of May, page 542.; yet in such a way that he left almost everything untouched. Wherefore we shall try here to make good the promises which our predecessor publicly made among those Passed Over at 2 May. Further, St. Avia was venerated in at least five dioceses, and hardly anywhere were the same things related of her. She was first of all confused with the fictitious St. Aurea, who in the Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Schönau about St. Ursula and her companions is stated to have been the daughter of the king of Sicily and a companion of St. Ursula. All these things, although they are fabulous and the sports of pious fancy, as was shown at length in the Commentary on St. Ursula, Damasus of St. Louis, a Carmelite of the Province of Touraine [Sainte Ursule triomphante des cœurs, de l'enfer, de l'empirée, page 337 and following.], and François Giry of the order of Minims Les vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1341 and following. greatly amplified: so that Papebroch slipped when he said that St. Avia was confused with St. Aurea of Paris, who is venerated on the 4th of October Act. SS. volume VII of May, page 542.. In the territory of Boulogne too she obtained a cult, but adorned with altogether different praises. There indeed she was said to have been of the band of St. Ursula; but in such a way that, when the Ursuline fleet was making for the Rhine, her ship, torn away from the rest, put in at Boulogne; which city is on the shore of the sea opposite England, in the tract to which the vulgar name is now Pas de Calais. Receive the history from Malbrancq De Morinis, book II, chapter 30, volume I, page 182.: That one of their ships (namely of St. Ursula and her companions), he says, was tossed by a storm to the port of Boulogne is witnessed by the girl Aurea or Avia, who was cast out there from a vessel almost spilling its load, and escaped to the shore of Boulogne. Received by the natives, she fixed her seat among the Morini, in a wood to which the town of Desvres is adjacent, four leagues distant from Boulogne, and that on the Roman road. There she spent some years with much praise of holiness, until again another incursion of enemies was made, who put out the eyes of the virgin, excellently defending the camp of her chastity and religion, and punished her with the loss of her head. So, adds Malbrancq, writing in the year 1639, runs the tradition of Desvres (indeed the parish priest of that town of forty-four years related the matter thus to me), and the monuments of the place, still old, draw strangers to them. For there still remains a sanctuary with a dwelling dedicated to her name, which from every age has been cultivated by anchorites.
[2] others said she was a martyr tormented in dire ways. At Imbleville in Normandy, where a chapel of St. Avia was also formerly founded, altogether different things were stated, as we know from old French verses, a printed copy of which was formerly kept there [Damase de S. Louis, Sainte Ursule triomphante, page 349; les Vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1345.]. It was related in this writing that St. Avia was cruelly scourged with rods and scorpions; that her body, so lashed that the bones appeared, was rubbed by the barbarians with a rough hair-cloth; that her wounds were exacerbated with hot and salt water; that her breasts were cut off with blunt knives, and other torments added; that the blessed virgin was then wasted in prison, but refreshed by divine light and also by the consolation of a heavenly angel, who showed her the chalice of the passions as to Christ the Lord; and further that the Blessed Virgin Mary held out to her through the bars of the prison for three weeks three white loaves made by the hands of angels; that meanwhile the barbarians did not cease from threats and sent lions to her, which, far from harming her, rather served her, until at length she poured out her life for Christ. But it is plain that these things were fastened on her from the Passion of another saint, with some ornament added, as is abundantly manifest even from the presence of the lions alone. Hence, however, on the outer wall of the church or chapel which she formerly had at Paris, one could see her image in relief, in which she was shown looking out through the bars of a window Act. SS. volume VII of May, page 542.; and at Rouen, in the church of the hermits of St. Augustine, she was painted enclosed in a tower, at whose
feet an angel was seen showing her a chalice [Damase de S. Louis, page 349; cf. Giry, les Vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1346.]; at Nantes finally a crowned man, accompanied by a boy (perhaps an angel), offers her a chalice almost in the appearance of viaticum Damase de S. Louis, page 350..
[3] Her cult in the dioceses of Vannes, Rouen and Reims; In the diocese of Vannes in Armorican Brittany, in which at 2 May, according to the Proper of the Saints of the year 1652, a commemoration of St. Avia, virgin and martyr, was made Act. SS. volume I of May, page 169., and according to the Proper of the year 1660 a semidouble (office) of St. Avia, virgin and martyr, from the common Tresvaux, les Vies des Saints de Bretagne, volume I, page XXXV., it was said that she appeared at Pleumelec near the town of Auray, and there sanctified by her sitting, or by her touch and blessing, a stone and two springs situated not far from the sea. From this persuasion arose the custom of placing weak children either in the hollow of this stone or in one of the springs (and in the other they wash their eyes). And since in this way, as is related, walking was obtained for many children (by reason of the name (as often happened Act. SS. Auctarium, volume V of October, page 25.) she was invoked by those who were avii, or could not go their way), a beautiful oratory was built by the inhabitants and pilgrims near the springs under the name and patronage of St. Avia, in which she is shown holding an oar in her hand Giry, les Vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1346; Damasus of St. Louis, page 347.. In the same diocese there exists a parish, one league distant towards the north from Vannes, to which the common name is Saint-Avé Dictionnaire universel de la France, volume IV, page 456. or Évé Tresvaux, Vies des Saints de Bretagne, volume I, page LI.; which masculine form, Alexis Lobineau testifies in the Rev. Mr. Tresvaux Ibid., loc. cit., was already long ago in use in the rolls of the Armorican nobility. This erroneous manner of writing arose from this, that in the vernacular speech Sainte Avé or Sainte Évé is pronounced no differently from Saint Avé or Saint Évé. The church of this parish possesses part of the relics of St. Avia Ibid., loc. cit.. Most of the other sacred remains were formerly said to be kept in the Cistercian abbey for women of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs Giry, les Vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1346.; I would not dare to deny it, but I fear they were rather those of some Ursuline virgin of Cologne. Meulan on the Seine venerated her as the titular patroness of its church, and Imbleville in the diocese of Rouen and Belleville in that of Reims erected chapels to her name. We have said that a vernacular history was preserved at Imbleville. At Belleville there existed an old proper office of nine lessons, containing her martyrdom. A hermit lived there. At Mantes, Vernon and other places of Normandy she was accustomed to be invoked in almost all necessities of soul and body. She was venerated also in a collegiate church near Orléans; at Troissy, a parish of the former diocese of Soissons in Champagne; and also an old image of her was seen in the church of the village of La Queue in Brie, and at St. Michael's of Poissy Damase de S. Louis, pages 350 and 351..
[4] likewise at Paris in the house of St. Avia, whose fortunes are explained; Probably in the reign of Philip Augustus, great-grandfather of St. Louis, a church was consecrated at Paris under the patronage of the same saint Ibid., loc. cit.; Du Breul, Antiquités de Paris, page 615.; whence the adjacent street was named Sainte-Avoie, the appellation being twisted in the same way as the Latin via into voie. That oratory, with the adjacent houses, was bought partly in the year 1283 by Jean Sequence, parish priest of St. Merry, partly by the canons of the same church in the year 1290 [Lebeuf, Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocèse de Paris, volume I, pages 271 and 272.]. Three years later there were placed in it the Good Women, or poor widows, who adopted the manner of life of the Beguines Du Breul, Antiquités de Paris, page 615.. A little before the year 1308 Lebeuf, Histoire etc., page 272., at the expense (unless I am mistaken) of Jean Hersant, parish priest of St. Merry Du Breul, Antiquités, page 615., a chapel or oratory was newly made in the house of the Good Women situated at Paris within the Temple gate, in the land and domain of the parish of the church of St. Merry Lebeuf, page 272.. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the buildings were falling into ruin Du Breul, page 616., and in the year 1610 only three Ibid., page 670. and in the year 1620 nine Beguines remained Ibid., page 272., when these, from desire of a better life and by the counsel of Guy Houisier, parish priest of St. Merry, resolved to embrace the life of the Ursuline nuns; about which matter, around the year 1620 Ibid., page cited., it was agreed on certain conditions between the nuns of the congregation of St. Ursula in the Parisian suburb of St. Jacques du Haut-Pas and the mother and sisters living in the place dedicated under the name or invocation of St. Avia or Avita, Ste Avoie, in the city of Paris, the noble damsel Madeleine l'Huillier, called de Sainte-Beuve (foundress of another Ursuline convent of Paris), endowing the said house of St. Avia with the sum of a thousand livres tournois of annual and perpetual revenue [Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, volume III, page 149.]. The parish priest consented on the 10th of December of the year 1621, and Cardinal de Retz approved on the 4th of January of the following year Ibid., page cited.. In the year 1623 royal letters patent were granted [Dulaure, Histoire civile, politique et morale de Paris, volume V, page 457, Paris, 1825.]. Afterwards the Ursuline nuns built a new convent there, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century were eighty in number, communicating sound doctrine to a great multitude of girls Giry, les Vies des Saints, volume I, col. 1346.. This house was closed in the year 1790, and in the year 1802 a synagogue of the Jews was built on part of its ground Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, volume V, pages 457 and 458..
[5] [likewise in the diocese of Évreux and elsewhere. What deeds of St. Avia seem able to be admitted.] It is strange that the memory of St. Avia is not announced in the Parisian martyrology of Cardinal de Noailles; on the contrary in that of Évreux at 2 May is read: On the same day, of St. Avia or Advisa, virgin and martyr, whose memory is celebrated both at Paris and also among the Armoricans. In some places she is venerated on the 6th of May; formerly the Ursulines of Paris kept her feast on the first Sunday of that month with an office from the common of a martyr and a plenary indulgence [Act. SS. volume VII of May, page 542, and Giry, les Vies des Saints, volume I, page 1346.]. From what has been said it is manifest that the cult of St. Avia at Paris, and especially in the diocese of Vannes, where she communicated her name to a village before all memory of men, is much older than the twelfth, or rather the thirteenth, century, when through the dispersion of the relics of the Holy Virgins of Cologne piety and devotion towards them was propagated through Gaul, and that therefore St. Avia can in no way be held to be of their number. Indeed it is not credible either that she set sail with St. Ursula from Britain and put in at the territory of Boulogne: at most it could be admitted that at the end of the fifth century, or rather in the sixth, when so many other Britons (as we declared in the Commentary on St. Ursula) fled into Gaul, leaving their homeland, she came into those parts: for it is not to be over-hastily denied that she was British by race; otherwise it would not be understood why she should have been presented with ecclesiastical honours by the Armorican Britons, who formerly venerated scarcely any saints but their own. The rest which Malbrancq relates has no difficulty. And so much of St. Avia outside her own day, because she was erroneously deferred to the present one.