ON ST. CILINIA THE MOTHER OF ST. REMIGIUS, AT LAON AND REIMS IN GAUL,
AFTER THE YEAR 458.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
Celinia, mother of St. Remigius, in Gaul. (S.)
BY V. D. B.
§ Sole. The writings of Hucbald of Saint-Amand on St. Cilinia. Her age, praises and cult.
A few things about the deeds of St. Cilinia, but good enough and certain, have been transmitted to us by the care and solicitude of those [All that has become known about St. Cilinia is taken from the Lives of St. Remigius, her son.] who commended to the memory of posterity the glorious deeds of St. Remigius, archbishop of Reims and apostle of the Franks. As we know very well from Hincmar, who patched together the Acts of St. Remigius between the year 877 and 882 Act. SS. volume I of October, page 64., after the middle of the eighth century an old and ample Life of St. Remigius was still known to the clergy of the church of Reims. They, namely, had seen a book of the greatest size, written in an ancient hand, on the birth, life, virtues and death of blessed Remigius, the most holy patron Hincmar, Life of St. Remigius, number 3, ibid., page 131; cf. ibid., page 62.. But this book perished amid the calamities by which the church of Reims was afflicted in the time of Charles Martel. Hincmar judges Ibid., loc. cit., and perhaps not wrongly, that from this very book there were excerpted by the most celebrated Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus, priest and afterwards bishop of Poitiers, in a plain
style, some miracles to be recited among the people, as Giles, fourth bishop of Reims after St. Remigius, had asked him between the year 565 and 595 Ibid., loc. cit.. And indeed, even if Fortunatus had been the first to comprise the deeds of St. Remigius, since he is a weighty writer and a contemporary of those who had lived with the most holy man, his credit and authority are not easily to be despised. And from that little writing of his, which they usually call the shorter Life of St. Remigius, we shall gather almost all the things which we shall share with the reader about St. Cilinia. We shall also employ as witnesses Hincmar and his abbreviator Flodoard; but there is less weight in their sayings, since they lent their ear more than was right to popular little tales.
[2] [Various people attribute various writings on St. Cilinia to Hucbald, monk of Saint-Amand;] In bibliographical and other books there is much talk of a Life or History which Hucbald, monk of Elnone or Saint-Amand, who died around the year 930 at almost ninety years of age, is supposed to have written. If you hear Fabricius Bibliotheca med. et inf. Lat., under Hucbaldus. and Oudin Commentarius de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, volume II, col. 418., Hucbald wrote a history of St. Cilinia, mother of Blessed Remigius, apostle of the Franks, and also an office and chant of the same; if you lend an ear to Mabillon Annales Benedictini, book XXXIX, number 81, volume III, page 268., Hucbald found at Nevers a little book on the life of St. Cilinia, mother of Blessed Remigius, and celebrated her in verse; if we consult Baillet Des Vies des Saints, Table of authors, at 21 October., he will testify that Hucbald wrote the Life of St. Cilinia in verse; and finally, to omit others, Ziegelbauer Historia rei literariae O.S.B., part IV, chapter 4, volume IV, page 409. and the anonymous monk of St. Vanne, writer of the Benedictine Library Bibliothèque générale des écrivains de l'ordre de S. Benoit, volume I, page 510., record that a History or Life of St. Cilinia, mother of St. Remigius, was written by Hucbald. On the other hand Dom Rivet Hist. littéraire de France, volume VI, page 211 and following. calls into doubt whether Hucbald ever went to Nevers; by which he seems to make it uncertain whether there was occasion for this learned monk to write anything about St. Cilinia: for the rest he professes that he expects a clearer light from us.
[3] [but these have not yet been found: and if the testimonies of the ancients are inspected, especially of Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance,] But in truth, since the writings of Hucbald on St. Cilinia do not seem to survive any longer (for they have been sought so often, and never found), it is very difficult to determine what the master of Saint-Amand committed to writing; especially since the older writers agree little among themselves. Yet it is certain that Hucbald was at some time at Nevers, since from there, as is very well established from his epitaph Ibid., page 213., from Philip of l'Aumône, or abbot of Bonne-Espérance Act. SS. volume III of June, page 34., and from Gunter In Reiffenberg, Chronique rimée de Philippe Mouskes, volume I, page 531., who died at Saint-Amand in the year 1107, he translated the relics of SS. Julitta and Cyricus into the monastery of Saint-Amand. Nor do I think it is to be doubted that Hucbald did in fact write something about St. Cilinia. For that same Philip, whom everyone knows to have been a contemporary and familiar of St. Bernard, in the History of the translation of SS. Cyricus and Julitta, which he sent to the abbots of Saint-Amand Hugh and John Ibid., page 524., plainly related these things Act. SS. volume III of June, page 34.: He made for the city of Nevers …; where, staying with the bishop, he so clung to his company that he became his companion in every business. For the same pontiff took him to himself as a familiar to such a degree that he entrusted his furniture to him. And because the prelate had received the increase of his upbringing in youth at Reims, he ordered him to be made the composer of music on the history of Blessed Cilinia, mother of St. Remigius. Which words are by no means to be understood as if he had set to musical measures (for he was also an excellent musician [See his metrical little works in Gerbert, Scriptores de Musica, volume I, and in Migne, Patrologia, volume CXXXII, col. 905 and following.]) the antiphons to be sung after the lessons of the nocturns, which are often called histories Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium med. et inf. Latinitatis, under Historia.; but that he had comprised the deeds of St. Cilinia in verse. So Philip relates in the same place that Hucbald composed on St. Andrew a musical setting of Antiphons: but also of certain Lauds having the beginning "Quae vere pia laus".
[4] [from whom all the others received their information immediately or mediately, Hucbald did not find a Life of St. Cilinia at Nevers, nor did he write one; but from what the Life of St. Remigius gave, he composed one or another hymn.] Meyer, who first published his annals in the year 1551, wrote these things at the year 950 Commentarii sive annales rerum Flandricarum, fol. verso 16.: There died Hucbald, monk of Saint-Amand, who celebrated in a beautiful poem Cilinia, mother of the holy Remigius, archbishop of the Remi, and, dwelling with the bishop of Nevers, obtained from him the body of the holy Cyricus, a little boy indeed but a great martyr, and carried it to Elnone into the monastery of the holy Amand: which, unless I am mistaken, he excerpted from Philip of l'Aumône. Molanus reported Meyer's words about this poem in his Usuard among the annotations at the 21st day of October Usuardi Martyrologium, edition of 1568.; and hence Miraeus seems to have forged, in his scholia on the ecclesiastical writers of Sigebert of Gembloux Bibliotheca ecclesiastica, page 147., a History of St. Cilinia, mother of Blessed Remigius, apostle of the Franks. It was a ready step that thereafter Hucbald should be said to have written a Poem and a History; nor were those lacking who did. Perhaps a certain anonymous writer of Saint-Amand went before, recent enough, since he cites Surius. He, in a Catalogue of the manuscripts of Saint-Amand, in which, besides many other things, he praises the principal writers of Saint-Amand, whether their writings survived or were lost, committed these things to paper In Reiffenberg, Chronique de Philippe Mouskes, volume I, page 530.: Hucbald … wrote a History of St. Cilina, mother of St. Remigius, bishop of Reims, an office and chants of the same. And here you have whence Oudin and Fabricius drew their assertions and even their words. But Mabillon seems to have spoken by conjecture, or not attending sufficiently to the words of Philip, abbot of Bonne-Espérance: for it is not credible that after the middle of the eighth century there existed a Life of St. Cilinia, which Hincmar and Flodoard would certainly have used in writing the deeds of St. Remigius. And what kind of poem or musical setting Hucbald's was it is easy to divine; since we still have his similar Poem on St. Theodoric In Mabillon, Annales Benedictini, volume III, appendix number 34, page 642., or, as he himself calls it in the prefixed letter, Musical setting Ibid., page 641.; which is nothing else than a double hymn, comprising briefly the principal deeds of St. Theodoric, coming very near to those which we now recite in the Roman Breviary on the feasts of St. Teresa, St. John Cantius and others. And so the Poem or Musical setting on St. Cilinia most probably contained nothing else than what is read of her either in the shorter Life of St. Remigius by Fortunatus or in the fuller one by Hincmar. Now if it is asked at what time these things were done, we come again into the midst of darkness. Papebroch judges Act. SS. volume III of June, page 36. that the relics of SS. Cyricus and Julitta were carried from Nevers to Saint-Amand around the year 860; nor is there any reason why one should depart from this opinion: so that Hucbald is to be judged to have written the rhythmical praises of St. Cilinia a little before.
[5] Since, therefore, Hucbald does not seem to have written a Life or History of St. Cilinia, and since the poems which he composed have not yet been found up to now, The words of Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, on St. Cilinia. it remains that, to learn the praises of St. Cilinia, we return to the very sources from which he himself seems to have drunk. Fortunatus, then, wrote the following of her, setting out the nativity of St. Remigius Act. SS. volume I of October, page 128.: He, then, shone from his first birth, whom the divine goodness chose not only before he was born, but before he was conceived: to such an extent that a certain monk Montanus, while he rested in the lightest sleep, was thrice struck by admonition to foretell to his blessed mother Cylinia, by a truthful report, that she would conceive a male child, so as to designate his name and merit. He at once fulfilled the command, and announced to the most fruitful mother the joys of the offspring to be conceived *. And she, as she did not appear doubtful in the credulity of faith, so received in childbirth him whom she had foreknown in the womb. She was not slow; as one certain, she, secure, at once brought forth the most happy pledge which she had first conceived in the body. In whom sweet infancy continually signified the merits of the age to come, and what the mother had recognized before conception, she now saw before the time. Nor has Fortunatus more things that pertain in any way to St. Cilinia.
[6] [She was noble, the wife of Aemilius, the mother of two saints and the grandmother of a third saint.] On the nobility of St. Cilinia there agree Hincmar, Flodoard Ibid., page 65., and Milo of Thérouanne, or whoever wrote the panegyric oration on St. Principius Act. SS. volume VI of September, page 61.: who also say that her husband was Emilius or Aemilius. Him, no differently from the holy sons Remigius and Principius, St. Sidonius praises highly in letter XIV of book VIII among those which Sirmond published. For he addresses Principius in these words Act. SS. volume I of October, pages 65 and 66.: By whose (Antiolius's, bishop of an unknown see) report, who your father was, and who and of what sort you brothers are, by what prerogative of character you both discharge the supreme pontificate, I was anxious to learn, and I remember that I rejoiced to have learned. To which father, who once namely had you, the house of Aaron, the ancient pontiff, would scarcely be compared in merit. St. Cilinia bore three sons from her marriage, namely St. Principius, the unnamed father of St. Lupus, and St. Remigius; which things Hincmar sets out in these words Ibid., page 135.: For blessed Cilinia, intent on pious works, though she was held in the body in the world, yet in mind she dwelt in heaven. She, in the flower of her youth, had borne of her one husband Emilius Principius, afterwards holy bishop of the city of Soissons, and his brother, the brother of blessed Lupus the bishop, the successor of the same Principius, who discharged the priesthood until the last times of the glorious Remigius, and so died. Because Flodoard, contracting these things, omitted the words "and his brother", hence the opinion arose among some that St. Cilinia had only two sons, namely St. Remigius and St. Principius, and that the latter, before his episcopate, by the bonds of marriage
had been bound. But everyone sees that the more obscure words of Flodoard are to be illuminated by the clear words of Hincmar. For the rest, see what was said by our Suysken in the Commentary on St. Remigius Ibid., page 66., by Cuper in the Collection on St. Principius Ibid., volume VII of September, page 61., and by my colleague in the Historical Commentary on St. Lupus Ibid., volume VIII of October, page 449..
[7] [She seems to have been born around the beginning of the fifth century: most of the wonders which are narrated of the childbirth in which she bore St. Remigius are not approved.] The age of St. Cilinia is to be learned from the age of her children. Now it is sufficiently agreed among the learned that St. Remigius was born around the year 436, ordained bishop around the year 458, and died around the year 532, on the Ides of January Cf. Act. SS. volume I of October, page 70.: whence it seems to be gathered that in the year 436 St. Cilinia was still of a vigorous age; so that she was born around the year 400. But in Hincmar and his followers there is a long narrative about the old age with which St. Cilinia was afflicted, no differently from her husband Aemilius, when she conceived St. Remigius in her womb. For there is set up there Ibid., page 135. a long dialogue between St. Montanus, that hermit of whom Fortunatus also spoke, and St. Cilinia: in which she objects the worn-out strength and old age of her husband and herself, contending that it cannot be that she should conceive and suckle the foretold son; but he answers: Know that when you have weaned the boy Remigius, you will anoint my eyes with your milk, and I shall receive sight: for Montanus is said by Hincmar to have been blind. To which also contributes that there was formerly much talk among the people of Reims about St. Balsamia, who is held to have been the nurse of St. Remigius, because St. Cilinia could not suckle her son, and of whom we shall speak at 16 November. But since Hincmar admitted many fables into his Life of St. Remigius; since Fortunatus has nothing of all these things; and since moreover St. Cilinia was a noble and honourable woman, and is therefore to be judged to have had regard for matronly modesty; I would rather trust the simplicity of Fortunatus than the abundance of Hincmar. For the rest, the people of Reims themselves, although in the Breviary which Archbishop Armand Jules de Rohan had printed in the year 1759 the words of Hincmar have been very closely approached, I yet doubt whether they adhere strongly to this narrative. It has certainly been changed somewhat in the first of the ten tapestries in which the life of St. Remigius is shown. For there is set forth there not St. Cilinia anointing the eyes of St. Montanus, but the boy St. Remigius touching them with his hand Cf. Tarbé, Trésors des églises de Reims, page 324.: which miracle is likewise referred to St. Remigius in the office of St. Cilinia inserted at 21 October in the Breviary of Noyon of the year 1650. But if it was permissible to take it away from St. Cilinia, why not with better right from St. Remigius? Wherefore no one, as I at least hope, will take it ill that I think one should go over to the opinion of Suysken Act. SS. volume I of October, page 67., to whom all those things which Hincmar and others added in this place to the sayings of Fortunatus are little pleasing. Let it be, therefore, that St. Cilinia was born around the beginning of the fifth century, and bore three sons at a mature age, yet not worn out.
[8] She lived and died in the territory of Laon, probably at Cerny; Of her other deeds nothing becomes known. From a probable conjecture those who published the Breviary of Reims in the year 1759 added the following: The pious mother offered her infant to God, and omitted nothing in educating him as a Christian, that he might one day answer the divine calling. Thus Cilinia advanced from virtue to virtue and, more illustrious day by day in sanctity, at length, full of merits, passed to the Lord. Her relics are kept religiously in the church of St. Remigius. That St. Cilinia lived in the territory of Laon * is established from Hincmar Ibid., page 135. and Flodoard [Historia Remensis, book I, chapter 10, in the Bibliotheca Patrum of Lyon, volume XVII, page 512.], writing of St. Remigius: He was born … in the district of Laon. That she died there is implied by the old additions to Usuard which I shall report below, in which her feast (whether by this word the memory of her happy death or a bare festivity is designated) is set at Laon, or Lugdunum Clavatum. But Marlot, inquiring more closely into the birthplace of St. Remigius or the place of St. Cilinia's dwelling, wrote these things Metropolis Remensis historiae, book II, chapter 2, volume I, page 140.: The place too where the boy is brought up is commonly called Cerniacum, a township in the Laonnois. Yet it is more probable that the paternal house was at Lauriniacum or Labriniacum, where Blessed Remigius laid the bones of his mother, according to the custom then most usual because of persecutions; which a manuscript codex, or the Register of the visitation of the most eminent Cardinal de Bourbon, still confirms. But since, as anyone can gather from our René de Ceriziers Les commencemens de la France Chrestienne sous S. Remy, page 21., it was formerly said that St. Remigius was born and brought up at Cerniacum (which village, commonly called Cerny, is three leagues distant from Laon, and lies in the lesser district of Craonne), I for my part would not dare with Marlot to depart from that old tradition because St. Cilinia was buried in the castle of Labriniacum. In truth the dead were ordinarily buried at that time in the place where they had died; but this was not a fixed law, and contrary examples of that age are known [Cf. on St. Maximinus, bishop of Trier, Alexander Wiltheim, Luciliburgensia Romana, book III, chapter 2, pages 97 and 98.].
[9] [She died after the year 458, but at an uncertain time, and was buried by St. Remigius.] In the Calendar which is read at the front of the Breviary of Reims of the year 1759, St. Cilinia is said to have passed to heaven around the end of the sixth century; Castellan in the universal Martyrology is content to set the fifth century beside her name; but in the Parisian Martyrology of Cardinal de Noailles St. Cilinia is stated to have died in the year 450 or 470; in the Missal of Soissons of the year 1745, around the end of the fifth, the beginning of the sixth century. And others otherwise. What then, amid this variety? First of all it is certain that an error lies in the Breviary of Reims, which is so enormous that it seems it can be ascribed only to the typesetters. Nor is it credible that St. Cilinia departed to those above in the year 450. For since the longer testament of St. Remigius, although it is held by me, no differently from my predecessors [Act. SS. volume I of October, page 106 and following; De Bye, Réponse de l'ancien des Bollandistes … touchant le testament de S. Remi, 1788; Réplique de l'ancien des Bollandistes, 1781; Acta S. Belgii, volume I, page 604 and following.], to be supposititious or wonderfully interpolated, is yet so ancient that it was known to Hincmar and Flodoard Act. SS. volume I of October, page 108., the historical notices contained in it do not seem to be held worthless. Now among the donations which St. Remigius is stated there to have made to his cousin St. Lupus, bishop of Soissons, comes Labrinacum, where, he says, I laid the bones of my mother [In Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl., book I, chapter 18, Bibliotheca PP. Lugdun., volume XVII, page 519 E.]; by which, if I understand anything, it is indicated that St. Remigius, when he saw to his mother's funeral, was not only grown up but also a bishop; since otherwise that duty would rather have belonged to St. Principius and to the father of St. Lupus, the elder brothers. The mother must therefore have exchanged this earthly life for the spiritual one after the year 458, around which we said above that St. Remigius was clothed with the pontifical mitre. Her husband Aemilius had died before St. Sidonius Apollinaris Book VIII, chapter 14, in Migne, Patrologia, volume LVIII, col. 612. gave his letter to St. Principius, in which namely he is said to have once had such excellent sons; and this must have been written before the year 472 or certainly 482, since St. Sidonius did not live longer Cf. Galland, in Migne, volume cited, cols. 438 and 439.. But neither can a certain argument be deduced from this, although many in more recent books set down (on what authority I do not know) that St. Cilinia died a widow. All these things considered, I marked her death at the beginning after the year 458. And that Remigius himself, bishop of Reims, buried his mother in the territory of Laon is no wonder; since this land was then part of the diocese of Reims: for indeed that same man around the year 500 cut it off from his territory in order to erect a bishopric there Cf. Acta SS. volume I of October, pages 96 and 97.. I would add here finally that Labrinacum, also Labriniacum and Lauriniacum, is to me the same as the castle or little village of Lavergny, about two leagues distant from Laon towards the winter sunrise, and part of the parish of Parfondru Cf. L'Expilly, Dictionnaire de la France, under Lavergny..
[10] It is obscure at what time the body of St. Cilinia was translated. How long the body of St. Cilinia lay at Labriniacum I have inquired in vain. Molanus already in the first edition of his Martyrology of Usuard at the 5th day of April brought forward this commemoration among the additions: At Laon, the first translation of St. Celinia, mother of St. Remigius the bishop; which announcement passed into the following editions of the same and into Ferrari's Catalogue of saints, into Wallasser's German or Canisian Martyrology and into Du Saussay's Gallican one. But why (which he is not usually wont to do) did Molanus omit to indicate whence he received these things? not that I doubt that most accurate man proceeded without surety and witness, but so that other circumstances might be known. Neither Hincmar nor the Breviaries of Reims and Noyon have anything of this translation; so that it would be a ready conjecture that it was not made before the tenth century. But on the other side, since the bishop of Nevers in the ninth century commissioned Hucbald of Saint-Amand to write poems on St. Cilinia for this reason, that he had been brought up and instructed at Reims, or, as Philip of l'Aumône says, because the prelate had received the increase of his upbringing in youth at Reims, it is an indication that already then St. Cilinia was venerated in the monastery of St. Remigius and that therefore her body had already been translated there. For St. Cilinia has not been venerated in the whole diocese of Reims from before all memory of men; since her name and festival are still entirely absent from the Breviary of Reims which Archbishop Louis of Lorraine had published in the year 1650; nor do I know that it was brought in there before the eighteenth century: but it was carried out only in the archmonastery which I was just mentioning.
[11] Notable relics kept at St. Remigius's at Reims. But neither argument is very firm; and this one thing is certain, that from a very long time until the revolution of French affairs, by which in the last century religion no less than the royal majesty was laid low, the body of St. Cilinia, or at least a notable part of it, was kept in the monastery of St. Remigius, enclosed in a most precious chest. Marlot calls this casket covered with gold plates Metropolis Remensis hist., book III, chapter 10, volume I, page 337.; the writers of the augmented Gallia Christiana, praising the high altar, related these things Gallia Christiana, volume IX, col. 222.: Behind the altar a pyramid rises, distinguished as it were by a threefold storey; the lower, which is square, contains the case of Blessed Gibrian; the middle that of St. Cilinia; the upper is adorned with an elegant reliquary, in the form of a pyramid, containing the arm of St. Philip the apostle. From here every year, on the Monday of Pentecost, the shrine of St. Cilinia was taken down, so that it might be carried publicly, together with the reliquary caskets of other monasteries, in the procession which the clergy of the metropolitan church held on this day Tarbé, Trésors des églises de Reims, page 23.. Which custom already existed in the thirteenth century, since in the year 1309 the abbot of Hautvillers, who contended that the carrying of the shrines was not of right but of good pleasure, and therefore had not sent the reliquaries of SS. Helen and Nivard, lost his case before the ecclesiastical court Ibid., loc. cit.. In the year 1790 the case of St. Cilinia, with the remaining caskets and other treasures, was entered in the inventory or index which the municipal officers of Reims made Ibid., page 176.; which thing paved the way for the plundering of the gold and silver and for the burying of the sacred relics. In the year 1792 this violation was completed.
[12] The memory of St. Cilinia in the martyrologies, That around the middle of the ninth century St. Cilinia had already received the honours of the heavenly ones follows of itself from what we have discussed at length about the poem of Hucbald of Saint-Amand. In the Usuardine codex of Montier-en-Der of the diocese of Châlons, made in the ninth or tenth century Dom Bouillart, Usuardi Martyrologium sincerum, page XXXI., there is read at 21 October Ibid., page 173.: In the city of Lyon, of St. Cilinia, mother of the most blessed Remigius, archbishop of the Remi; similarly in that of Héry, which Sollerius showed was written in the eleventh century for the use of some monastery of the province, or rather of the diocese, of Reims Usuardi Martyrologium, pages LV and LVI., at the same day you have Ibid., page 616.: Likewise in the castle of Laon, of St. Cilinia, mother of Blessed Remigius, archbishop of Reims: more briefly in that of Tournai, written in the thirteenth century either for the use of, or from a codex of, Hautvillers Ibid., page LVI. in the diocese of Reims: In the city of Laon, of St. Cilinia; somewhat otherwise in that of Centula, or of St. Riquier, which was a monastery of the diocese of Amiens: At Laon, of St. Cilinia, mother of St. Remigius. Similar commemorations may be found in the Usuardine additions of Brussels, Anchin and the greater Antwerp one: all of which were made within the former province of Reims. To which must be added those of Utrecht, Leiden and Hagenoy, and the editions of Lübeck-Cologne, of Greven and of Molanus. From Molanus Baronius transferred the name of St. Cilinia into the Roman Martyrology; which was also received into the Parisian. The memory of St. Cilinia is ascribed not to Laon but to Reims in the Martyrology of Évreux, and indeed in these words: At Reims likewise, of St. Cilinia, mother of Blessed Remigius, bishop of Reims, who conceived him, God foretelling it, and brought him up most holily when he had been happily born.
[13] and her festival in a few dioceses of the province of Reims. But if you except these commemorations made in the Martyrologies, the cult of St. Cilinia never seems to have been widely propagated. As I have already pointed out, in the diocesan Breviary of Reims of the year 1630 nothing is found in honour of St. Cilinia; and in the Breviary of the year 1759 a lesser semidouble office is prescribed, not at the 21st day of October, on which the octave of the dedication is kept, but at the 29th of the same month. Nothing is appointed either in that of Beauvais of the year 1554, nor in the other later ones which are in my possession. I would say the same of those of Amiens, the oldest of which that I have was also printed in the year 1554. I also use that of Cambrai, published in 1509, and many later ones: nor here either is anything about St. Cilinia to be found. Nor was anything done about St. Cilinia in the dioceses of Tournai, Boulogne and Saint-Omer; of that of Châlons I have nothing to say: and so, as far as I know, the feast of St. Cilinia was kept only in the dioceses of Laon, Noyon, and in the eighteenth century in that of Reims, and so also in that of Soissons; in whose Missal, published in the year 1745, it is noted on the day before the feast of her son St. Principius, bishop of Soissons, that is, 24 September; which was afterwards changed, all commemoration of St. Cilinia being entirely suppressed and the Office of St. Principius reduced to simple rite: so the matter stands in the Order for reciting the divine office in the diocese of Soissons of the year 1827. From which too it is clear how varied and unstable was the cult of St. Cilinia, since her name was now inserted, now deleted in the liturgical books, and inscribed in the calendars at 5 April, at 24 September and at 21 and 29 October. And that the more recent ones were so easy in changing the day of cult seems to have arisen from this, that Castellan had written in the margin of his Universal Martyrology that the feast of St. Cilinia, mother of St. Remigius, was noted on the 21st of October because on the same day another Cilinia, namely the virgin of Meaux, was venerated. But the cult of St. Cilinia of Laon or Reims is so ancient that this assertion is rather a guess than a conjecture, and that the roles should perhaps be reversed. Wherefore it is better to leave these and many other things in darkness than to pour a false light over them. At the end I will add that in the Calendar or Directory of Nevers of the year 1637 the name of St. Cilinia is entirely omitted, although in the ninth century the prelate of that see took care to promote her glory.
Annotata* understand "to be conceived"
* The Laonnois.