Romanus

ON ST. ROMANUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT ROUEN,

PROBABLY IN THE YEAR 644.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Romanus, bishop and confessor at Rouen. (S.)

BHL Number: 7319, 7320

BY J. V. H.

§ I. His memory in the more recent calendars; a synopsis of his life; the biographers, from whom some are selected for publication.

Although the Martyrologies of Ado and Usuard, His memory in the sacred calendars; commonly called classic, make no mention of St. Romanus, archbishop of Rouen, there is nevertheless no reason for us to doubt of his sanctity, seeing that he has a cult, as we shall show below, at once most ancient and most celebrated. The present-day Roman Martyrology has under this day: At Rouen, of Saint Romanus, bishop. Which the Martyrology of Auxerre, published by Bishop Charles de Caylus in the year 1751, amplifies in these words: At Rouen, of St. Romanus, bishop, who drove the remains of heathenism from the city and diocese, and shone forth with very many miracles living and dead. His body rests there in the greater church, and every year on the feast of the Ascension is carried through the city in solemn procession. That of Évreux, moreover, published about the same time, namely in the year 1752 by order of Pierre de Rochechouart, remembers St. Romanus on two days following each other, namely on the 22nd of October, where it says after St. Mello of Rouen: On the same day, the memory of St. Romanus, bishop of the same city, whose birthday is kept on the following day. And so on the following day one reads: At Rouen, of Saint Romanus, bishop, who overturned from the foundations the shrines of the pagans, advanced the good to better things, and strove to call back the wicked from wickedness.

[2] A brief life; So that what we are going to say in this Commentary may be better understood, we judge it opportune to exhibit here a synopsis of the Life of St. Romanus from the Breviary of Rouen, published by order of Archbishop Louis de la Vergne de Tressan in the year 1736. Benedict, whose wife Felicitas had long lamented her sterility, obtained from God by prayers and alms Romanus, heir of his virtue and of his means. The parents, no less commendable for piety than for family, so assiduously had their son steeped in the best studies from boyhood that on becoming a young man he attained the summit of the virtues. Sent to the court of Clotaire II, he was an illustrious example of chastity, justice and mildness. Ordered by the king to take part among the nobles in his more sacred counsels, he sustained the parts entrusted to him excellently and praiseworthily. On the death of the bishop of Rouen, and when votes varied about choosing a successor, at last fasting and prayers being proclaimed, by the common wish of all Romanus was declared bishop. Clotaire was pleased that he should be assumed as bishop whom he had called to a part of his royal solicitude. With manifest indications of divine vocation he took up the pastoral burden. He had scarcely come to Rouen when he overturned from the foundations a shrine of Venus, frequented by the few pagans who survived in the city. Others in the diocese consecrated to Jupiter, Mercury and Apollo he likewise thereafter destroyed; having taken up the pastoral care, he inspected the sheep entrusted to him, and, not suffering himself to be weakened by continuous labours, he advanced the good to better things, called back the wicked from wickedness. He established such discipline in the clergy that it was a shame for subjects to deviate from the rule. He himself, made a model of the flock, sparing of food and sleep, pious and frequent in celebrating the sacred mysteries, refreshed his soul by constant meditation of divine things. He won the highest authority for his words and deeds, because the operation of divine power shone forth in him. Going to meet the Seine as it flooded both the fields and the city itself, he ordered the swelling waters to refrain from deluge, and within its fixed bounds, at the voice of another Moses, the docile river was held in. Other signs too, both living and dead, he brought forth, by which the sanctity of the excellent shepherd shone out. Forewarned by God, he underwent death. While he lived the father of the people and the rule of the clergy, after his death he is recalled among the Saints and principal protectors of the diocese. In the reign of Louis the Pious his head was carried into the monastery of St. Medard at Soissons: in the year one thousand and ninety it was restored and, with the rest of the bones, was deposited in the metropolitan church by William, called the Good Soul. The reliquary was enriched with gold plates and gems; these being taken away in a public necessity, Archbishop Rotrou had another made, in which, the bishops of Lisieux and Sées accompanying, he deposited the holy ashes. It is this which is called until now the Feretory of St. Romanus. Whoever, condemned to death and chosen by the chapter of Rouen by right of privilege, shall have carried it out, together with the accomplices of the same crime, is released free every year on the day of the Ascension of the Lord.

[3] Various Acts, The Synopsis of the Life which we have exhibited has been drawn from the manifold Acts surviving until now. Yet the older documents seem to have perished. Among those we have before us, we shall publish the Life written by Gerard, monk of St. Medard, and, as he calls himself, father of the monks; it is brief and so sober that we suspect it to be mutilated. This Gerard, who, as we shall show below, wrote as the tenth century was just ending, in a letter to Hugh, archbishop of the city of Rouen, in which he announces that the Life of St. Romanus was composed by him with new care, says that he had with him and was transmitting a very old Life, published in heroic verse; so that it may be known altogether to all, he says, that I am sending you no falsehoods of inventions. But that which has been depicted in historical style, keeping it with us on account of its excessive age, I am sending you this one, arranged in the style of that one Migne, Patrologia, volume CXXXVIII, column 173.. A twofold older Life, therefore, lit the way for Gerard the writer, by which he laboured to claim authority for his composition. It remains therefore to inquire about what time Gerard lived, so that we may to some extent track down what is the antiquity both of the Life written by him and of the metrical Life, so far preserved, which already in Gerard's time was called very old. Mabillon in his Analecta wisely notes Page 429, Paris edition of 1723. that many Gerards are read in the Catalogue of the abbots of the monastery of St. Medard of Soissons, likewise many Hughs, archbishops of the Church of Rouen; but, he adds, none of these Gerards agrees in time with any Hugh.

[4] Chiefly of Gerard, monk of St. Medard; And in truth no Gerard, or, as others

say, Giraldus or Gairaldus held the abbacy at a suitable time, as is clear from the Catalogue of the abbots of St. Medard of Soissons: for Giraldus I sat in the time of St. Gregory the Great Gallia Christiana, volume IX, column 410.: Giraldus II under Dagobert I Ibid., place cited.: Giraldus III in the middle of the eleventh century Ibid., column 414.: so that the first two are of too great an antiquity to have been able to revise the Life of St. Romanus with second cares: while the third was contemporary with no Hugh of Rouen. Mabillon judges, therefore, that Gerard, although he calls himself father of the monks, was yet not an abbot, but provost of the monastery of St. Medard, then occupied by seculars, as is clear from the catalogue of abbots. For in the year 902 Heribert I, count of Vermandois, invaded the abbey, and transmitted it by a sort of hereditary right to his son Heribert II, likewise count of Vermandois, who was followed by his son, count of Troyes and Meaux, Heribert III, until in the year 970 Odoleus was elected regular abbot Ibid., column 413.. Whether further this regular state persevered in the monastery may be doubted: since in the year 1210 there occurs Richard, a knight, called abbot of St. Medard, as we shall show below at no. 54. From this state of affairs one may conjecture that Gerard, the monastery being occupied by laymen, presided with the title either of provost or of dean, and thus could truly call himself father of the monks. And that Gerard was contemporary with Hugh II, occupying the see of Rouen from the year 942 to 989 Volume XI, column 23., is shown by the fact that Gerard says in the letter addressed to Hugh that Braine (a small town on the river Vesle) was in the power of the Church of Rouen. But under Hugh III, or in the year 1128, this lordship had already been transferred to the counts of Braine Vetera Analecta, page 429.. The letter, so far unpublished, we shall give below together with the Life written by Gerard.

[5] The metrical Life of an anonymous, and another, perhaps the most ancient of all; This moreover is established, that the metrical Life of St. Romanus is older than that of Gerard, seeing that he calls it very old. And since in Gerard's age the memory of this composition would almost have been wiped out, it is easily seen to be older by at least one century, and thus to approach very near to the time of St. Romanus. Yet, lest we be excessive, we shall not publish it, since it can be read in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum of Edmond Martène Volume III, column 1655. and brings forward almost nothing new for the elucidation of his deeds. In its place we shall give another Life, more prolix than Gerard's, written by an anonymous and divided into two books. The second book was composed under the pontificate of Robert I, archbishop of Rouen, and thus between the years 989 and 1037 Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 26.. And the first book seems to us to be that of which Gerard speaks, depicted in historical style and of excessive age: because 1° it ends with the customary doxology, which is ordinarily placed at the end of the whole work; whence a different author of the first and second book is argued. 2° Because it more distinctly orders the moments of time omitted by others, for instance that St. Romanus died on Sunday night, the 10th before the kalends of November, no. 16. 3° At Braine, says Gerard, this very old Life existed, and it was sent to our predecessors by Nicolas Belfort from the Braine manuscript, as Heribert Rosweyde noted in his own hand. 4° The author narrates certain things as one near to the time at which they happened; for instance, the exultation of the people, seeing the miracle, no. 11, the mourning at the death of St. Romanus, no. 16.

[6] The Life written by Fulbert, archdeacon of Rouen, Besides the three Lives so far enumerated, there is also a fourth, published in print at Rouen by Nicolas Rigault in the year 1609, which Mabillon judged the most ancient, namely that very old one depicted in historical style, which Gerard the biographer kept with him on account of its excessive age Vetera Analecta, page 430.. The most learned man did not know, namely, that the composition printed by Rigault has as its author Fulbert, archdeacon of Rouen in the eleventh century. There was hidden from Mabillon the letter, afterward made public by Edmond Martène in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum Volume I, column 181., inscribed: To his lords and confreres, sons of the holy mother Church of Rouen, Fulbert, a sinner, greeting. And the title of the book was: The preface of Fulbert the archdeacon to the Life of St. Romanus, archbishop of Rouen. It is certain, then, that Fulbert, the writer of this fourth Life, was archdeacon of Rouen. But since about the same time three Fulberts flourished at Rouen, we must consider to which of the three the composition is to be ascribed. But first of all there is to be eliminated Fulbert, monk of St. Ouen, who by order of his abbot Nicholas, in charge of the monastery from the year 1038 or 1042 to 1094 Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 141., composed a book of the miracles of St. Ouen, in which indeed he often professes himself a monk Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of August, pages 834 and 836.; and thus, leading his life among monks, he could not have occupied the archdeaconate of Rouen.

[7] Who, from various namesakes But there are two other Fulberts, both archdeacons of Rouen. Namely Fulbert, who was counsellor of Archbishop Maurilius, from the year 1055 to 1067 Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 30., as Orderic Vitalis testifies in book III of the Ecclesiastical History, saying Migne, Patrologia, volume CLXXXVIII, column 256.: In the same year (namely 1056) Bishop Maurilius and Fulbert the Sophist, his counsellor… came together at Saint-Évroul. To Maurilius the Gallia Christiana attributes the title of Blessed Volume XI, column 30.: and indeed such are the praises that Orderic gives him, that they exhibit a perfect image of the highest sanctity Migne, volume CLXXXVIII, columns 307 and 403.. Yet our men have omitted his Acts at the 13th of September, because sufficient evidences of public cult were not yet at hand for them to presume to claim the title of Saint or Blessed for him Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of September, page 50.. With the counsellor of Maurilius there ought not to be confused another Fulbert, mentioned by Orderic in these words Migne, volume CLXXXVIII, column 654.: Gislebert, bishop of Évreux … and Fulbert, archdeacon of Rouen, promulgated the decrees of the fathers (that is, the canons of the Council of Rouen of the year 1096 Bessin, Concilia Rotomagensia, page 77.). This promulgator of the Synod of Rouen is already distant nearly forty years from the counsellor of Maurilius: indeed, he seems to have extended his life at least to the year 1126: for in Orderic we read these words Migne, volume CLXXXVIII, column 635.: In the same year (1126) William, abbot (of St. Ouen), died, and Ragemfred, a monk of the same Church, took up the government: in whose time the cloister, completed with the other workshops of the monks, shone out especially. Then Fulbert, archdeacon and dean of Rouen, fell ill, and devoutly took up the monastic habit. And having died in the cloister of St. Ouen he was entombed before the chapter-house, and was decently covered with a white stone. For this Fulbert became, as it was then called, a monk ad succurrendum: that is, as Du Cange has it at this word, one who, when in his last moments or under the urgent danger of death, puts on the monastic garment, that he may become a sharer in the suffrages or prayers of the brothers and monks. But from the time when, for the validity of regular profession, a full year of novitiate in the cloister and in the habit of the Order was required, this kind of monkhood, which otherwise entailed all the obligations of the religious state, ceased.

[8] Is distinguished from contemporaries. Since, then, an interval of seventy years runs between Fulbert the archdeacon, counsellor of Maurilius, and Fulbert, likewise archdeacon, but made a monk in his last illness, we do not doubt that they were different, though marked by an equal dignity: therefore the question remains to be decided to which of them the fourth, or Fulbertine, Life is to be attributed. And we do not hesitate to ascribe the composition to Fulbert, counsellor of Maurilius, flourishing in the middle of the eleventh century. The reason that inclines to this view is this: that at the time when Fulbert was writing the Life of St. Romanus, the memory of the deeds of the holy bishop of Rouen was almost obliterated: for he says Martène, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume I, column 181.: I feared to take up so great a load of work, passed over by the most skilled men, lest the noble matter, written in a rustic style, should become cheap, if by chance it should fall into the hands of grammarians. But the anonymous of St. Ouen, who wrote at the beginning of the episcopate of William I, that is, about the year 1079, notes that the Life of St. Romanus had been committed to letters. For recording the succession of the bishops of Rouen he says Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, page 226.: To Hidulf succeeded Blessed Romanus, noble by birth and distinguished in virtue. To Blessed Romanus St. Ouen, sprung of illustrious birth and lofty in the greatness of his virtues. To Blessed Ouen succeeded the renowned Ansbert, a venerable bishop and glorious for holy works. Of these three and of Blessed Gildard we have only touched on the memory, because their deeds are held among us, clearly written by the most approved authors. Therefore the biographer of St. Romanus must have existed between the year 1056, in which Fulbert the counsellor of Maurilius flourished, and the year 1079, at which the deeds of St. Romanus were already preserved in writing: and thus the fourth Life is to be attributed to the former archdeacon Fulbert; by no means to the latter, who extended his life at least to the year 1126 Compare Histoire littéraire de la France, volume VIII, page 373.. We shall not publish the Fulbertine Life, already made public by Rigault, chiefly because it contains nothing that is not found in those to be published.

§ II. The Saint's birth; his offices at the royal court; the time of his episcopate and death, from the ordination of SS. Eligius and Ouen.

Of an illustrious father That St. Romanus was born of a noble lineage and indeed a Frank by race is admitted among all the biographers: the most ancient Life we have, to be published below, teaches at no. 3 that Benedict, the father of St. Romanus, was not only a fellow soldier of Clovis, but also, sprung from the royal house, was initiated in Christ by St. Remigius at Reims. Here are the words: There was a certain man, Benedict by name, in the kingdom of Gaul, which now is called Francia on account of the most glorious men and most robust warriors who, from the parts of Sicambria, under the Lord's leadership, arrived in these provinces and were converted by St. Remigius, archbishop of the see of Reims, through the word of sacred doctrine, and, reborn in the water of baptism, thereafter stood forth as true worshippers of the Catholic faith. This venerable Benedict, sprung from the noble lineage of the aforesaid kings, etc. From these words it is clear that Benedict, the father of St. Romanus, was a Frank by race. In the same way the metrical Life, no. I, records Benedict among the magnificent nobles and serene fathers of King Clotaire. Nor ought it to stand in the way that the Rigault Life says Page 3. that Benedict stood forth as sprung within the bounds of Gaul, as if for that reason he were to be deleted from the roll of the Frankish nation: for in the same place it says that he was of their (those converted by St. Remigius) noble race; and a little below Page 4., that, strenuous in war, provident in counsel, he had won for himself the greatest glory of virtue among the Latins, but also a higher place of familiar favour with the king,

it proclaims. Those who are called Latins in this place are the same as the Romans, namely the inhabitants of the Gauls, when the Franks were invading the region, who used the Roman or Latin language Compare Le Cointe, Annales Francorum at the year 595, § XVII.. That Benedict further, though a Frank, is said to have been sprung within the bounds of Gaul should not surprise us; since we know that Childeric, the father of Clovis, obtained his tomb at Tournai in the year 481; whence it is evident that the Franks already at that time had their seat fixed within the bounds of Gaul. Which indeed suffices for our chronology: for there is no leisure to define the beginnings of Frankish domination within the bounds of Gaul [Compare Daniel, Histoire de France, Preface Historique, page LXVIII, Amsterdam edition of 1742.]. Moreover we judge that Benedict was born after the death of Clovis.

[10] Who served in war under Clotaire I, For the older Life has at no. 3 that in the times of Lothar, renowned king of the Franks, son of Louis the most glorious prince, there was a certain man, Benedict by name. And this Lothar, or Clotaire I, held the kingdom of the Franks, either divided with his Brothers, or alone in its entirety, from the year 511 to 561. But the Rigault Life relates that Benedict, already distinguished in war, flourished under Clovis I or Louis: By acts of military service, it says Page 3., he had acquired an excellent name in the kingdom of Gaul, in the time of Louis the glorious king: this is the Louis whom the lot of war compelled to become a Christian from a pagan. If we follow this reading, we shall scarcely reconcile it with the rest of the chronology of the life of St. Romanus. For if it is true that Benedict had already obtained an excellent name under Clovis, who died in the year 511, he must have been born some years before the end of the fifth century: let us put, if you like, even one decade; it now follows that St. Romanus, made bishop about the year 630, was distant at least one hundred and forty years from his father's birth. Which I can scarcely admit: for the rule of Churches was not entrusted to decrepit old men. But if we admit the reading of the older Life, namely that Benedict lived in the times of Lothar, all flows well, nor does anything prevent us from placing the very birth of Benedict between the years 511 and 561; from which the deeds of St. Romanus thereafter proceed rightly in their order.

[11] Of a mother until then sterile, At what time St. Romanus was brought into the light, it is not permitted us to define, since documents are lacking. From the older Life at no. 4 it may be conjectured that the marriage of Benedict with Felicitas was at first sterile, and that for some time no hope of offspring shone: otherwise the angelic vision which the biographer reports is not sufficiently conveniently explained: Benedict, it says, Benedict, the Lord Jesus Christ has sent me to you to announce great joy to you; for behold by his nod your wife Felicitas will bear you an only chosen son, Romanus by name. For if the fear of sterility had not existed, there would seem no reason for the angelic vision. Moreover the metrical Life says the same thing more openly Migne, Patrologia, volume CXXXVIII, column 174.:

But because there was no fruit of posterity for them, Both were asking the gift of the supreme Deity.

Similarly the Rigault biographer Page 4.: Though he was so strong in honour within the royal court, he was held anxious by this one kind of misfortune, that, having no son, he was preserving his wealth for a stranger heir. Panting with this one heat of impatient desire, the venerable hero, ungrateful to himself, somewhat displeased himself; while this meditation of biting care was ulcerating his mind, to whom after his departure his high patrimonies, to whom the royal benefices, to whom even the long line of servants should pass by hereditary right. For his wife too was sprung of freeborn birth, who in the dignity of conjugal chastity went before the other matrons of her time also in example: but she was anxious from the distress of long sterility. There follows the angelic vision, which we have set forth above.

[12] Born at the beginning of the seventh century, Since, then, Benedict, the father of St. Romanus, flourished under King Clotaire, we must interpret this in such a way that under this king he received his first benefices on account of things excellently done in war and peace: for we do not believe that St. Romanus was born in the reign of Clotaire. Because, namely, his birth would at the latest have to be referred to the year 561, in which Clotaire died; and thus St. Romanus, entering on the bishopric of Rouen about the year 630, would have been nearly seventy years old, of which one would not easily persuade himself. The age suitable for the presbyterate or the episcopate in the Gauls was indeed thirty; as is established from the council of Agde, held in the year 506, in which canon XVII enacts Labbe, Concilia, volume IV, column 1386.: Let no metropolitan presume to ordain a presbyter or bishop before thirty years, that is, before he comes to the age of a perfect man. In the Fifth Council of Paris, assembled in the year 615, when it had been decreed in canon I that, on the death of a bishop, he ought to be ordained in his place whom the metropolitan by whom he is to be ordained, with his provincials, and the clergy or people of the city have chosen without any advantage or giving of money Ibid., volume V, column 1650.: To this canon the edict of Clotaire adds that a bishop so elected should be ordained by the order of the prince: or surely, if he is chosen from the palace, he should be ordained by merit of person and doctrine Ibid., column 1653.: the king desired, that is, that some from the palace clergy should be assumed to the summit of the episcopate, among whom surely was our Romanus. Since further we have from the more prolix biographer at no. 6 that the king, when the election of St. Romanus was referred to him, said that in a man one should attend to religion rather than age, St. Romanus, who was advanced to the see of Rouen about the year of Christ 630, seems not to have had thirty years, or the canonical age, at that time, and thus to have been born at the beginning of the seventh century of a father of seventy, as one who had served in war under Clotaire I, and of a mother until then sterile. Some weight is added to our conjecture, after a fashion, by the Rigault Life, which calls the saint a new Isaac, a son of promise Folio 6., and by the ivory codex of the Church of Rouen, in which it compares Felicitas, the Saint's mother, to Sarah, to whom, as is said in Genesis XVIII, 2, the ways of women had ceased: whence we assert that she was a fifty-year-old mother.

[13] And instructed in sacred letters, The Angel, foretelling the birth of the Saint, had enjoined that as soon as he was weaned from his mother's breasts and reached the years of understanding, he should be entrusted to Catholic men Folio, verso 5.. That the parents fulfilled the angelic precept the author of the Life to be published below teaches at no. 4: Born, Blessed Romanus was nourished with diligent care in the house of his parents. After a slight interval of time, at his own prompting, he is handed over to school teachers for spiritual disciplines beyond the others, to be especially steeped in the liberal disciplines. And that this study of the arts tended to higher disciplines the same biographer teaches us a little below, at no. 5, namely that he stood forth as an excellent knower of the Divine scriptures: whence it is also given to understand in what sense the spiritual disciplines are to be taken, to which St. Romanus was destined from boyhood. And this indeed consistently, since according to the angelic prediction the boy to be born was to be the splendour and ornament of the Church, a strong column, as is said at no. 4. That from his very infancy St. Romanus was prepared for the clerical service, then, is not doubtful, whether we look to the kind of disciplines to which he applied himself, or to the prediction made by the Angel. A little part of the life of the young Romanus is excellently described by the Rigault Life Folio 6.: The boy then grows, it says, is handed over to Catholic men, is more abundantly steeped in the divine scriptures, and all wondered that in a brief time he went before all those before him in doctrine and erudition. There shone in him no simple grace of virtues: for in his heart was sincerity and the fullness of the law, in his mouth truth and the greatness of pure eloquence. But the sweetness of divine dogma being tasted in advance, the more he was strong in the abundance of knowledge and holiness, the more he gave his labour to humility, showed himself affable to all, reckoning himself inferior to no one, thinking of that word of Solomon Ecclesiasticus III, 20: "The greater you are, humble yourself in all things:" and James IV, 6: "For the Lord resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

[14] He is called to the royal court, The same writer goes on Folio 7.: The fame of his sanctity being fragrant all around, the virtue of so excellent a youth reached the royal ears. The king himself too, delighted by the fame of the illustrious young man, was already thinking ahead about the appointment of one whom he had not yet known. An embassy is therefore sent, to admonish the young man by the king's command to come to the palace as quickly as possible; which the energetic young man at first spurned, as one who, zealous to be at leisure for God alone, preferred to avoid populous cities and the royal throng; but reflecting from the words of the Apostle Romans XIII, 1 that every soul ought to be subject to higher power, and chiefly to the royal majesty, though reluctantly, he betook himself to the royal presence. The biographer to be published by us says at no. 6: So placed, then, on the summit of the virtues, he began strenuously to serve in the court of King Clotaire. But it must be noted that this Clotaire, under whom St. Romanus was employed in the court ministry, is the second of this name, namely the son of King Chilperic, who at four months old succeeded his father in the year 584, and at last from the year 613 to 628 held alone the whole kingdom of France. It could certainly have happened that St. Romanus first went to the royal court at that time when Clotaire II was already in possession of the whole kingdom. Moreover this king, occupying already from the year 584 the kingdom of Soissons, had in his inheritance Neustria, that is, the part of Gaul situated between the Seine and the Loire, and thus the diocese of Rouen Compare Valois, Notitia Galliarum, under Neustria..

[15] And he devotes his care to the commonwealth: If we trust the metrical Life Migne, Patrologia, volume CXXXVIII, column 175., he does not seem to have been enrolled in the clerical service before he came, on being summoned to the royal court: for the poet sings:

Thence he is called according to custom to the palace hall, And is clad in the toga, burning rather, with a celibate life, To be held a devoted soldier within the camps of God.

By which words the writer indicates that St. Romanus preferred the service of Christ, or the clerical life, to the toga or civil magistracy: to which he seems not yet to have been initiated. Yet I should believe that in the intervening time in which he lived at court he was at least a cleric. For the clergy were frequent in the royal palace, both because for the Franks, until then barbarians, men instructed in knowledge and arts were necessary; such as were usually found among the clerics; and because St. Remigius had especially commended to King Clovis, newly baptized, to employ priests in his counsels. You ought, he says Migne, Patrologia, volume LXXI, column 1157., to employ counsellors who can adorn your reputation, and your benefice ought to be chaste and honourable, and you ought to pay honour to your priests, and to have recourse to their counsels. But if you agree well with them, your province can stand the better. Wherefore

there were in the royal court clerics who performed the office of referendary, or keeper of the royal ring, and of notary. See the Catalogue of Referendaries in the Glossary of medieval and late Latinity of Charles Du Cange, at the word Referendarius. That our Saint was distinguished by this dignity is asserted by François Pommeraye, Benedictine monk of St. Ouen, in his History of the archbishops of Rouen [Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen, page 119; Servin, Histoire de Rouen, volume I, page 68.]. But the said Du Cange has omitted the Saint's name, since it has so far occurred in no diploma: indeed Fr. Pommeraye himself a little below softens his affirmation, saying that St. Romanus was to the king either keeper of the ring or counsellor. Which latter indeed is most true: for in the older Life we read at no. 6 that he served in the court of King Clotaire, which we interpret of a civil magistracy; and the Rigault Life more openly teaches Folio 7 verso. that the king received Romanus with the highest honour and ordered him to take part in his counsels among the first of the palace.

[16] The year of his ordination depends on the death of Melantius How long St. Romanus lived at the royal court is uncertain: since no monument teaches us at what time he either began to be engaged in it, or went to the see of Rouen. Orderic Vitalis, in book V, attributes to Bishop Hildulf 28 years and to his successor, St. Romanus, 13 years, which time of 41 years runs between Melantius and St. Ouen, bishops of Rouen. In the year 601 Melantius seems still to have been alive: for to him St. Gregory the Great gave in the 4th indiction, or in the month of September of the year 601, a letter, book XI, letter 58 Migne, Patrologia, volume LXXVII, Works of St. Gregory, column 1177., by which he commends St. Augustine and his companions, sent to the nation of the English. If therefore the time of the death of Melantius and of the ordination of St. Ouen were certainly known, the chronology of the two in between, or of Hildulf and St. Romanus, could be established closely enough. But we do not know at what time Melantius died; this one thing seems to be admitted, that he was living when St. Gregory wrote the letter praised above after the month of September, or at least that he had not died so long before. As regards the ordination of St. Ouen, it is a most vexed question, which the learned have solved in various manners. The whole controversy depends on the text of St. Ouen in the Life of St. Eligius, which reads thus Ibid., volume LXXXVII, column 512.: Coming together, then, into the city of Rouen on the fourteenth day of the third month, in the third year of Clovis, still a very young king, on the Sunday before the Litanies, among the crowds of the people, among the columns of the clergy, among the choirs of those singing psalms, we were gratuitously consecrated bishops by the bishops together, I at Rouen, he at Noyon. The third month, the year beginning from March, is May. The Litanies are the Rogations, to be celebrated through the three days before the feast of the Lord's Ascension, as is established from canon XXVII of the Council of Orléans, held in the year 511, to which St. Gildard of Rouen subscribed: It has pleased, it says Labbe, Concilia, volume IV, column 1408., that the Rogations, that is the litanies before the Ascension of the Lord, be celebrated by all churches; so that the preceding three-day fast is released on the festival of the Lord's Ascension: during which three days male and female slaves are to be released from all work, so that the whole people may the more assemble. In which three days let all abstain and use Lenten foods.

[17] And on the ordination of SS. Ouen and Eligius, Certainly if, with the third year of the reign of Clovis deleted, the text of St. Ouen cited above were read, all would agree that the episcopal consecration of SS. Ouen and Eligius is to be placed in the year 646. For in that year, marked by the dominical letter A, Easter falling on the 9th of April, the fifth Sunday after Easter, or the one before the Rogations, fell on the 14th day of the third month or May. And other years marked by these notes do not occur, except 635 and 657, and neither of them can be reconciled with the chronology. All things therefore would concur well in assigning the year 646 to the consecration, unless there stood in the way another chronological note, namely that the Saints were ordained in the third year of Clovis, still a very young king. For if the year 546 is to be tied to the third of Clovis II, it is necessary that Dagobert died in the year 644, namely on the day on which all agree Dom Bouquet, Recueil, volume III, page 687., the 19th of January, whence the third year of the reign of Clovis was running in the year 646. But here is the knot, in a certain manner insoluble. Nearly all the more recent writers establish the death of Dagobert at the year 638, and thus the consecration of SS. Ouen and Eligius at 640, relying on the most firm argument of Fredegar Scholasticus, later by scarcely one century than what he narrates. This writer attributes only sixteen years to Dagobert, administering first a part, then the whole, of the kingdom of the Franks. Dagobert, he says Migne, Patrologia, volume LXXI, column 642., when he had already reigned seven years took up the greatest part of his father's (who died in the year 628) kingdom, as I have recorded above. And following up such a chronology to his death he says Ibid., column 656.: In the 16th year of his reign Dagobert… began to be ill… after a few days he gave up his spirit. And what the same Fredegar reports a little below, as having happened in the first year of Clovis, confirms the same chronology. In the first year, he says Ibid., column 657., the emperor Constantine dies… In the same year Sintila, king of Spain, who had succeeded Sisenand in the kingdom, died. Which two things agree most aptly with the year 639 [Compare Mariana, Historia de España, volume II, page 294, Valencia edition of 1785; Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium, page 753 and following, Bonn edition of 1838.]. Wherefore there can be no doubt that Fredegar established the death of Dagobert at the year 638.

[18] The time of which Le Cointe, Since two things are historically certain which make mutual straits for each other, namely that the 14th of May concurring with the Sunday before the litanies or the Ascension of the Lord belongs to the year 646, and that the death of Dagobert, which occurred in the year 638, brings the third year of Clovis II back to the year of Christ 640; various persons have entered on various ways of dispelling the difficulty. Le Cointe indeed at the year 640, § XXI, splits in two the text of St. Ouen brought forward above at no. 16, namely: there are two parts of this period. The former designates the year and day on which Ouen and Eligius arrived at Rouen: the latter notes the day on which they were consecrated bishops. They entered Rouen on the fourteenth of the third month: they were consecrated bishops on the Sunday before the Litanies: that Sunday before the Litanies was the twenty-first of the third month, or May, because in this year, the third of Clovis, Easter was celebrated on the sixteenth day. And he adds that those who do not distinguish two parts in the period of St. Ouen are forced to refer the ordination either to the year 635 or to 646. This distinction of Le Cointe is deservedly hissed off by Joseph Ghesquière in his Acta Sanctorum, in which he appends certain Annotations to the Exegesis on Dagobert of Godfrey Henschen. Who, I ask, he says Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume II, page 233., does not see that St. Ouen, surely an accurate and diligent writer, wished to designate by his notes of time not so much the epoch of his and St. Eligius's arrival in the city of Rouen, as the very day of the episcopal consecration received by both? And in truth what historiographer of any kind would expressly designate by all chronological notes the arrival of elected bishops at the episcopal city, or of absent elected abbots at their monastery, but would wrap in the deepest silence the day of their consecration. Let this one example stand for many, by which it may be evident that the fourteenth day of the month of May assigned by St. Ouen is the day of the episcopal consecration of Ouen himself and of St. Eligius, and not the 21st of the same month, of which Ouen made mention by not even one word: so that Henschen not undeservedly said at no. XI Ibid., page 230. that it is to be feared that those who separate the said 14th of May from the day of consecration, while they strive to build a little shrine, may destroy a basilica. I admit, however, that the arguments here adduced by Henschen are not so evident as to place the method of explaining the text of Ouen employed by him beyond all controversy.

[19] Refuted by Ghesquière, What then are those employed by Henschen? Namely he lays down two Ibid., place cited.: that Rogation or Litanies Sunday is to be distinguished from the Sunday before the Rogations, so that the latter is the fifth, and the former the fourth, Sunday after Easter; in this way the consecration was accomplished on the 14th of May, falling in the year 640 on the fourth Sunday. The other argument is that in the year 640 Easter could have been celebrated among the Neustrians eight days earlier, in which case the fifth Sunday concurred with the 14th of May. But in turn Le Cointe at the year 798, § XCII, rejects Henschen's arguments as sufficiently shaky, as is established from the words of Joseph Ghesquière brought forward above. For citing the XXVII of the Council of Orléans, which we reported at no. 16, he shows that the fifth Sunday after Easter is truly called and is the Sunday before the Rogations, which were celebrated through the following three days; and thus that another proof is needed if one is to persuade that the fourth Sunday was called Rogation Sunday. As for what Henschen adds, that certain solemnities are accustomed to be announced a whole eight days before their celebration: it can be answered both that the custom, even if it existed when Henschen wrote, is not shown to have existed in the seventh century; and that it sufficed for the Rogations, which were to begin the next day, to be indicated on the fifth Sunday. As regards Henschen's other argument, namely that the people of Rouen could perhaps have anticipated the Easter of the year 640 by eight whole days, of which he brings forward various examples from Gregory of Tours, by which he shows that it happened that the eastern Churches differed from the western in celebrating the paschal solemnity. And certainly the French Chronological Work exhibits many examples of such discord, L'art de vérifier les dates. But Le Cointe, § XCIV, alleges a twofold cause of this discrepancy; the one, when the 14th of the paschal moon, or the full moon of March, fell on a Saturday, the Latins placed the paschal sacrament not on the following Sunday, or the 15th of the moon, but on the 22nd, so that they differed from the Orientals by a whole eight days. For it seemed absurd, says Sanclemente De vulgaris aerae emendatione, page 486., to the Latin fathers to recall the glad and festive day of the Resurrection on that moon on which it was established that Christ the Lord was fixed to the cross and buried for the redemption of the human race. And in truth Christ on the fifth day, the 14th of the moon, had celebrated the sacred supper, and on the next day, the 15th of the moon, died on the cross. But this cause cannot plead for Henschen: for in the year 640, the dominical letter being A, the paschal full moon fell on the 12th of April, the fourth day of the week; and Easter on the 16th of the same month, and so there was on this head no cause for moving Easter.

[20] In turn refuted, The other cause of the discrepancy lies in this, that the Latins, in establishing the new moon, by two days the Orientals

of Easter went ahead. Whence it could happen, and sometimes did happen, that the full moon, falling on the 21st or 22nd of March, gave Easter to the Latins in the month of March; while for the Orientals, for whom on the same days only the 12th or 13th of the moon was running, and therefore, since by the decree of the council of Nicaea that is to be held the paschal moon whose 14th day occupies or follows the vernal equinox, fixed to the 21st of March, for the Orientals the paschal moon began to run on the 8th of April, so as to reach its full on the 21st of April: whence it happened that eastern Easter was distant from western or Latin Easter by nearly a whole month. But neither can this cause help Henschen: for, as we have already said, in the year 640 Easter was celebrated on Sunday the 16th of April, on the 18th of the moon; the difference of two days does not affect the solemnity itself: this alone would have been the case among the Orientals, that they transferred the full moon from the fourth to the sixth day of the week, without the festival itself of the Lord's Resurrection having been able on that account to be moved from its place. The knot, then, so far insoluble, stands.

[21] We refer to the year 646: Yet Adrien de Valois, in book XX of the Res Francicae Volume III, page 185., in a manner cuts it, when he suggests that the part of the text of Ouen is to be struck out by which we are taught that the consecration of SS. Ouen and Eligius is to be tied to the third year of Clovis II: for he says in the third year of King Clovis, in which year Eligius and Ouen are said to have attained the episcopate; and then he affirms that some things in his (Ouen's) books on the life of St. Eligius have been inserted by more recent writers. But it seems to me more bold than is just to remove the whole part. But what if for the third year of Clovis II we were to read the ninth year? The chronology of Dagobert's reign and at the same time of the ordination of SS. Ouen and Eligius would stand: indeed, it could be retained that Clovis is called still a very young king: for if it be placed in the ninth year, he would not have reached thirteen years, at which age he could still be called a very young king. Whatever be the case with this solution, such as it is, of the vexed question, which can be taken up again at the 1st of December in the Acts of St. Eligius, this seems to me more certain, that the epoch of the ordination of SS. Ouen and Eligius cannot be moved from the 14th of May of the year 646. To the same point it also tends that the most ancient Calendars, even of the ninth century, tie the ordination of St. Eligius to the 14th of May [Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, page 519. Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of August, page 797.]. Now we step forward to ordering, in some manner, the chronology of the Life of St. Romanus.

[22] From Orderic, not rashly We said above at no. 16 that the time of 41 years, for which the episcopate of Hildulf and of St. Romanus lasted, is bounded by the pontificates of Melantius and of St. Ouen. It is true indeed that this interval of years is taken from book V of Orderic Vitalis, who sometimes stumbles in chronological notes, yet less than is commonly said, as the writers of the Literary History of France observe Histoire littéraire de la France, volume XII, page 202.. Thus in the most recent, as I believe, Paris edition of Orderic, of the year 1840, he is accused of having altogether erred in recording the kings of France contemporary with Hildulf. For he wrote Volume II, page 344.: He (Hildulf) 28 years… Then in France there reigned Childebert and his sons Theodoric and Theodebert and Lothar the Great. At these words the editor says, I render the French words into Latin: We cannot but refute this phrase, which contains as many errors as words. The only one of the cited princes who was contemporary with Hildulf is Clotaire II. The author seems to have confused him with his grandfather Clotaire I, and since the latter was contemporary with Childebert and Theodoric, he brought them back to the time of Hildulf, mistaken also in the degrees of kinship. There is one error in the text of Orderic, joining the reign of Childebert with the episcopate of Hildulf: for Childebert was carried off by poison in the year 596 and in the year 601 Melantius, predecessor of Hildulf, was still alive. But the rest is most accurate: from the year 596 Theodoric of Burgundy until 613, Theodebert of Austrasia until 612, sons of Childebert, ruled. As regards Clotaire II, he is not said to be a son of Childebert; indeed since he is placed after Theodoric and Theodebert, it is rather suggested that he had another father. And he is called the Great for this reason, that from the year 613 until his death he subdued the whole of France to his sceptre.

[23] Being blamed for error, We ought not, therefore, to be too ready in arguing the falsity of certain notes that Orderic laboriously gathers in ordering the series of the bishops of Rouen, and we shall prudently follow him, until we are taught better from other monuments. He writes these things, then, of St. Romanus Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, volume II, page 345.: He for 13 years, in the time of Popes Honorius, Severinus and John, Heraclius reigning, shone with miracles: and on the tenth before the kalends of November he passed gloriously to the Lord. Then in Gaul the Christian princes Dagobert and Clovis flourished: in England Oswald, Oswin and Oswy: in Italy Agilulf, Adoald, Arioald, Rotharit and Rodoald. In the reign of Arioald, Blessed Columbanus, a Scot by race, after he had built the monastery of Luxeuil in Gaul, founded that of Bobbio in Italy, in the Cottian Alps. Let us weigh these chronological notes, and compare them with the chronological tables of the Benedictines. Pope Honorius I held the pontificate from the year 625 to 640 L'art de vérifier les dates, page 261, Paris edition of 1770.: of Hidulf too Orderic had said Volume II, page 344. that he was in the time of Honorius: whence we have that in the intervening time St. Romanus was bishop and persevered until John, Pope from the year 640 to 642 L'art de vérifier les dates, page 262.. In Gaul, to King Dagobert from the year 622 to 638 Ibid., page 529. succeeds Clovis II, who held the kingdom until the year 656 L'art de vérifier les dates, page 530.. In England, Oswald, king of Northumbria from the year 634 to 643 Ibid., page 768., Oswin from 644 to 651 Ibid., place cited., and Oswy from 643 to 670 Ibid., place cited.. In the Italian kings the chronology of Orderic is less accurate; for Agilulf, king from 591, ceased in the year 615 Ibid., page 363.; Adoald from 615 to 626 Ibid., place cited.; Arioald from 625 to 636 Ibid., page 364., in whose reign Blessed Columbanus, who died in the year 615, could not have founded the monastery of Bobbio. Rothari from 636 to 652 Ibid., place cited.; finally Rodoald reigned from the death of his father Rothari to the year 672 Ibid., page 365..

[24] The chronology of the pontificate of St. Romanus Although in Orderic there is a grave error about the Italian princes, as we have said, yet all the chronological notes concur in this, that it seems certain that St. Romanus survived after the year 640: whence our view is also confirmed, which ties the ordination of SS. Ouen and Eligius to the year 646. And indeed the chronological order of the Roman Pontiffs of the seventh century is certain enough that error does not easily creep in: and thus since Pope John IV was elected on the 24th of December of the year 640, it follows that at that time St. Romanus held the see of Rouen: indeed it is probable that he occupied it until the end of the pontificate of Pope John, otherwise the widowhood of the Church of Rouen would have to be too long prolonged, which even so is so long (namely from the 23rd of October 642 to the 14th of May 646), that the episcopate of St. Romanus seems rather to be somewhat extended to the times of Theodore, Pontiff from the 24th of November 642 to the 13th of May 649. Nor let anyone suspect here a bare conjecture: for in the more prolix Life at no. 16 it is said that St. Romanus died on Sunday night, the tenth of the kalends of November, that is, on Saturday, the 23rd of October: now the leap year 644, marked with the dominical letter DC, has Saturday the 23rd of October; nor does any other year occur more apt for tying to the death of St. Romanus: not the year 639, marked with a similar letter C, because it does not agree with the chronology of St. Ouen, as we shall show below: not the year 650, in which surely St. Ouen was already sitting. In this way the too prolonged interregnum between SS. Romanus and Ouen is removed, and is reduced to about nineteen months, or from the 23rd of October 644 to the 14th of May 646: and the beginning of the pontificate of St. Romanus, who held the see of Rouen for 13 years, is defined as about the year 631.

[25] Is established to some extent It is further certain that between the election and the consecration, accomplished, as we said, in the year 646, a rather long time ran. For St. Eligius, elected, until then a layman, lest he should nevertheless, says St. Ouen Ibid., place cited., seem to deviate in anything from the Catholic rule, did not allow himself to be consecrated priest before he should pass some courses of time under the little rule of the clerical state. For the council of Arles of the year 524 decreed in Canon II that laymen, before being assumed to sacred orders, should persevere for a whole year in the clerical state. Here are the words Labbe, Concilia, volume IV, column 1622.: And although the ancient fathers ordered longer times to be observed in the case of laymen; yet because, with the number of churches growing, it is necessary for us to ordain more clerics, this is agreed among us, only without prejudice to the ancient canons, that no metropolitan shall grant the episcopal dignity to any layman whatever, nor shall other bishops presume to confer the honour of the presbyterate or diaconate, unless conversion has preceded by a whole year with them Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume VII of October, page 964.. These are about the reasons that urge that there was a rather long interregnum in the Church of Rouen.

[26] For the arguments that stand for the delay of the consecration of St. Eligius also contend for the interregnum at Rouen. For St. Ouen was elected with St. Eligius, as he himself testifies in the Life of Eligius Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume III, page 229.: They elected, he says, from the merit of his sanctity… to the priestly office St. Eligius… And they elected with him Ouen, his companion, who was called Dado, to preside over the Church of Rouen. And then a little below there occurs the often-repeated text about the consecration of both on one day. The interval, then, that runs between the election and ordination of St. Eligius is also to be reckoned for St. Ouen. And to exhibit by way of synopsis the chronology of St. Romanus, as it is deduced from what has been said above: we think that the Saint was brought into the light at the beginning of the seventh century, so that he was under thirty years old when he ascended the see of Rouen. In about the year 631 he received the episcopate, in which, persevering for 13 years, he rested by a holy end in the year 644, on the 23rd of October.

[27] Objections are cleared away. Not all writers, however, agree with this chronology. Le Cointe in his Annals

at the year 626, § XIII Volume II, page 775., refers the ordination of St. Romanus: and this necessarily, marking the ordination of SS. Eligius and Ouen at the year 640. Although even in this view of his the chronology fails him: for St. Romanus having died, as he himself says Volume III, page 84., in the year 639 on the 23rd of October, St. Ouen was ordained successor on the 21st of May 640; and thus not even a half-year's space came between the death of St. Romanus and the consecration of St. Ouen; but we have seen a little above that at least a full year is required between his election and consecration. But if the death of our Saint is brought back to the year 638, then the beginnings or the thirteen years of his episcopate will have to be referred to the year of Christ 625, and we shall have to cut off some of the 28 years which Orderic attributes Historia Ecclesiastica, volume II, page 344. to the episcopate of Hildulf; since, as we showed above at no. 16, Melantius, predecessor of Hildulf, was still alive in the year 601. I know that the answer will be that Orderic sometimes sins in employing numbers: so be it; although, as we said above at no. 22, not so frequently as some think; and moreover, in order to reject his authority, I judge it necessary to show the error: so long as the question is doubtful, I prefer in historical matters to err with ancient rather than with more recent writers. The Gallia Christiana applies a healing hand to Le Cointe's chronology, namely we think, it says Volume XI, column 12., that he died in the year 638, so that a whole year and some months passed between his death (that of St. Romanus) and the consecration of St. Ouen. An unhappy medicine, which, as we have shown, stirs up another evil. François Pommeraye the Benedictine in the History of the archbishops of Rouen, written in French Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen., an Anonymous in a similar History published at Rouen in the year 1731 Histoire de la ville de Rouen, Part III, page 135., another likewise by the advocate Servin Histoire de la ville de Rouen, volume I, page 67., and finally the recent writer L. Fallue Histoire politique et religieuse de la métropole de Rouen, volume I, page 63., so order the chronology of St. Romanus that, made bishop in the year 631, he died in the year 644. To which view, according to what has been set forth above, I think one must entirely subscribe: by which, namely, all things are most conveniently reconciled: namely the episcopate of Hildulf, ordained in the year 601, to whom we readily concede 28 years of pontificate up to the year of Christ 630: then a longer interregnum, perhaps of a full year, in which the people of Rouen, at first carried away into various factions, at last agreed on the election of St. Romanus in the year 631: and finally from that time the course of 13 years in which the Saint held the see, up to the year 644, when full of merits he passed to the heavenly homeland.

§ III. Various translations of the Relics; the destruction of the sacred body by the Calvinists; some remains preserved.

The body of St. Romanus, first in the church of St. Gildard He passed, says the briefer biographer at no. 9, out of the world on the tenth before the kalends of November. Then, taking up his body, they buried it with all diligence, where the beneficent magnificence of the Lord discloses many miracles through his same servant Romanus until the present day. The author does not express in what church the funeral of St. Romanus was laid: but we know that it was brought into the church of St. Mary, which afterward obtained the name of St. Gildard Pommeraye, Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen, page 129.. This building in the seventh century was outside the walls of the city of Rouen, as is shown by the anonymous who has described the city at large Histoire de la ville de Rouen, par un solitaire, volume I, page 7.: for formerly, as has often been said, the bodies of the faithful were buried outside the walls. The remains of St. Romanus, laid in a tomb of jasper, remained in the same church until the year 1036, in which Archbishop Robert, son of the duke of Normandy, visited them, and, finding them whole, commanded them to be venerated with continued cult. Robert, says Orderic Historia Ecclesiastica, volume II, page 365., began from the foundations the metropolitan church in the city of Rouen to the Holy Mother of God, which he for the great part completed; and which Blessed Archbishop Maurilius in the ninth year of his episcopate Ibid., page 371., that is, in the year of Christ 1063 Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 30., dedicated.

[29] Buried, is translated in the year 1079 into the metropolitan building; But in the year 1079 William, archbishop of Rouen, commonly called the Good Soul, gloriously transferred, says Orderic Historia Ecclesiastica, volume II, page 314., the body of Saint Romanus the bishop from its own building into the metropolitan basilica, and reverently placed it in a shrine, laboriously covered with gold and silver with precious stones. He also established that his solemnity on the 10th before the kalends of November be festively celebrated through his whole diocese, and by a general edict decreed that a festive station be held every year at the body of the holy bishop outside the city; to which he invited nearly all the parishioners by admonitions and absolutions and blessings. On the occasion of this translation seems to have begun the Fair which is called of the Indulgence and of St. Romanus: Foire du pardon ou de S. Romain, which, beginning from the 23rd of October, was continued at first for two days, then for six days Histoire de la ville de Rouen, volume I, page 34.; and they were celebrated in the field next to the northern walls of the present city, and the place was given the name of the field of the Indulgence (la champ du pardon). Moreover, in order that William might compensate the people of St. Gildard for the loss of the lost body of St. Romanus, he instituted a station, as Orderic says above, at the tomb: which compensation indeed consisted in this, that on Palm Sunday the Holy Eucharist at the sixth hour of the morning was reverently carried by two presbyters to the church of St. Gildard, from which it was then brought back with branches and palms in solemn procession to the metropolitan church. This rite is called the procession of the sacred Body (la procession du Corps Saint) [Compare Mauléon, Voyage liturgique, page 337; Farin, La Normandie Chrestienne, page 474.]. The Translation of the body of St. Romanus was formerly celebrated on the 17th of May Farin, page 4736.: but I see the festival struck out in the Breviary of Rouen, published by order both of François de Harlay, in the year 1627, and of Archbishop Louis de la Vergne de Tressan in the year 1736: and the whole solemnity coalesces into the 23rd of October, on which St. Romanus is celebrated with the rite of a triple, as is said in the same place, of the first class with an Octave.

[30] In the year 1179, into a more precious reliquary In the year 1179 Rotrod or Rotroc, son of Henry, count of Warwick, archbishop of Rouen from the year 1164 to 1183, transferred the body of St. Romanus into a more august reliquary; of which matter an instrument exists in the archive of the cathedral church, of the following tenor Bessin, Concilia Rotomagensia, volume II, page 31.: For this reason the Church treasures gold and silver, that it may be expended for the redemption of captives and the feeding of the poor and other works of mercy, according as the manifold urgency of necessities often demands. For when a most violent famine was pressing, the Church of Rouen took the gold which was there from the golden feretory, where the body of the most blessed Romanus, Confessor and bishop, had been laid with veneration, and, giving back Christ's patrimony to Christ, mercifully distributed it for the sustenance of the poor. But Rotrod, archbishop of Rouen, gloriously re-clothed the most blessed Confessor, despoiled for the needs of the poor, and bringing him out from the old reliquary, in which he had once been most devoutly laid, sealed with care by the seals of Archbishop Geoffrey, of the chapter of Rouen, and of John of Crema, Cardinal presbyter of the title of St. Chrysogonus, he laid him with reverence and devotion in a new feretory, covered with gold as well as with precious stones, Arnulf of Lisieux and Froger of Sées, bishops, assisting him, who had been specially summoned for this, and sealed it both with his own and the chapter of Rouen's seals, and also with those of the aforesaid bishops, in the presence of many who were there. This was done in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1179. Indiction 12.

[31] The value of the former being given to the poor, it is laid away: This despoiling of the reliquary of St. Romanus seems to have happened in the year 1124. At this year too the Annals of Hildesheim note [n] In Leibniz, Rerum Brunsvicensium, volume I, page 740.: An eclipse of the moon took place on the kalends of February: hail of great mass fell on the 8th before the kalends of August: an eclipse of the sun took place on the 3rd before the ides of August: a great famine occurred: Pope Callistus died, to whom Honorius succeeded. An instrument of this mournful visitation was preserved among the inscriptions which were in the reliquary of St. Romanus in the cathedral church of Rouen, and a copy exists in the Bollandist collection of the Royal Library, no. 8,919: In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord ICXXIIII, Indiction II, in the time of the lord Archbishop Goisfrid (from the year 1111 to 1128), on the 5th before the kalends of June, the fifth day of the week, the solemnity of the Apostles Peter and Paul being to come on the following Sunday, there was sought and found in this very urn the whole body with the head of the most blessed Romanus, in the presence of the lord John of Crema, Cardinal of the Roman Church of the title of St. Grisonus *; Chrysogonus who with his own hands both unrolled what was found and rolled it up to be laid away, in the presence of the aforesaid Bishop G. and of Boso, abbot of Bec, and Goisfrid the dean and Roger the sacristan and Fulbert the archdeacon, with the canons of the Holy Church of Rouen, William of Saint-André, Roger of Pireis, Robert of Saint-Nicolas, Connan, Richard of Gonville, Hugh of Loderesval, presbyters, Ralph and Osmund and Hugh son of Turald and Walter of Saint-Lô, deacons, Jevenia, Walter son of Adelelm, Ralph son of Ursellus, John son of Benedict, Robert of Le Mans, William of Nereium and Romanus, and religious laymen, Gardinus the smith, Ranulf the goldsmith, with the servants of the church Turfrid, Stephen, Girold, Walter, Odo, etc.

[32] Excepted, however, although another instrument has otherwise In the instrument brought forward this occurs to be noted, that it is said in express words that in the reliquary of the cathedral church there was found the whole body with the head of the most blessed Romanus. For the monks of St. Ouen of Rouen have constantly affirmed that the head of St. Romanus is in their church. And not undeservedly: since a firm tradition stands among them that this treasure has existed in their monastery from the eleventh century. Indeed it could not be found at what time or on what occasion the head of the Saint was separated from the rest of the body, unless perhaps this happened when the body of St. Gildard was translated from Rouen to Soissons to the monastery of St. Medard. For when Hilduin, abbot of St. Medard from about the year 824 to 840 Gallia Christiana, volume IX, column 411., greatly desired to adorn the new church, on which he was working, with the remains of St. Gildard, who according to a false opinion then in force was reported to be the brother of St. Medard Acta Sanctorum, volume II of June, page 67., he asked of the emperor Louis the Pious that the monastery might be enriched with the body of Gildard. The emperor indeed assented,

but the people of Rouen opposed. Whence the business had to be concluded by a transaction: namely that, the head of St. Gildard being left at Rouen, there should be given to the monks of St. Medard the body of St. Romanus, resting in the same church. The transaction pleased both parties, and the head of St. Romanus together with the body of St. Gildard and of St. Remigius, bishops of Rouen, in the reign of Louis the Pious, was translated to Soissons.

[33] Of the head, which into the monastery of St. Ouen Nearly two centuries later Nicholas, abbot of St. Ouen from about the year 1042 to 1092, was seized by a pious desire of having the head of St. Romanus, to adorn the new church which he had undertaken Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 142.. He therefore sent a certain monk to Odo, abbot of St. Medard Ibid., volume IX, column 415., to receive more precious Relics for precious gifts. Nor did Abbot Odo resist: yet, since it was a question of Relics to be transferred outside the bounds of the kingdom, fearing the king of France, he strove first to obtain his licence; having obtained which he gave the head of St. Romanus with many other Relics of the Saints to Abbot Nicholas. And thus it came about that the monks of St. Ouen have perpetually gloried that the head of St. Romanus is preserved in their church Pommeraye, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Ouen, page 202.. The narrative of this translation, as it exists in a very old codex of St. Ouen, mutilated at the beginning, was published by François Pommeraye in his History of the monastery of St. Ouen Ibid., page 413., and we have it transcribed twice from the same codex in the Bollandist papers of the Royal Library of Brussels under no. 8,919. First, however, some things must be noted that create difficulty. In the first place it is said that the translation was celebrated on the eighth day of the Lord's resurrection in the year 1090, that is, Easter falling on the 21st of April, the octave of the Resurrection was the 28th of April. But if this is admitted, it will at once be false, as the narrative has it, that the body of St. Romanus was preserved in the basilica of Blessed Mary neighbouring the monastery of St. Ouen, afterward named from St. Gildard; for in the year 1079, as we have shown above, Archbishop William had already transferred the remains of his predecessor into the cathedral. But if we say that the head of St. Romanus was brought before this translation, or before the year 1079, we run into another rock, namely that Odo, of whom the instrument treats, did not obtain the abbatial staff before the year 1080 Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 415.; since between St. Gerard, who, a fugitive from the monastery of St. Medard, in the year 1080 founded the monastery of La Sauve-Majeure in the diocese of Bordeaux Ibid., volume II, column 866., and Odo, there intervened Abbot Pontius for some years Ibid., volume XI, column 415.. To escape these difficulties in some manner, we believe that the words indicating the year 1090 are to be struck out, as added by a more recent hand, since the instrument itself openly says that the body of St. Romanus was still preserved in the church of St. Gildard. As regards the rule of Odo, abbot of St. Medard, it must be said that at that age the government of the monastery of St. Medard was altogether uncertain, holy men and simoniacs alternated: thus St. Arnulf followed the deposed Pontius, and after the flight of St. Gerard, who had succeeded Arnulf, Pontius again usurped the government of the monastery Ibid., column 414.. After whom came Odo, perhaps that very man who under St. Arnulf the abbot had built up machinations to ascend the abbatial seat. In those most turbulent times, then, Odo too either bore himself as abbot, or at least holding the government of the monastery, assumed the title of abbot, according to the custom of that age, as we showed above at no. 5. In which way he could have given the head of St. Romanus to Abbot Nicholas even before the year 1079: indeed the very bringing of the head perhaps gave occasion to Archbishop William for transferring the body to the cathedral church. Now let us exhibit the history of the translation itself, mutilated at the beginning, as we have said, from François Pommeraye Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Ouen, page 413.. It is treated in the beginning of carrying the body of St. Gildard to Soissons.

[34] … Nor should burial divide from one another the bodies In the eleventh century, of those whom the bosom of the heavenly court had received together in the moment of one hour into heavenly glory; all delay being then removed, with the counsel of his nobles he directs messengers with speed to Rouen for the body of Blessed Gildard. On learning this the citizens of that city, shaken with heavy grief and conspired to resist, at first indeed try to go out against it with arms in bands, and violently to resist this edict; but at length, seized by sounder counsel, they yield to the imperial power. Yet they earnestly ask to be given some portion of their shepherd for his eternal memorial. The envoys, then, daring to take away nothing from the members, leave the head of Blessed Gildard there, and by mutual exchange carry home the head of Blessed Romanus with the body of St. Remigius, archbishop of the same see: and the monks of Blessed Medard, going festively to meet them together with the people, receive the bodies of the Saints with great rejoicing, and lay them honourably in their church. Then after the course of many times had slipped by, the renowned duke of the Normans William, who also obtained the kingdom of the English, being taken from human affairs, the province of the whole of Normandy, bereft by the death of so great a prince, was oppressed by pestilent men with excessive affliction, it was depopulated by predatory hands and public incursion, intestine wars were stirred up and the Church of Christ, chiefly in those parts, was tossed by the adverse whirlwind of evils.

[35] By the industry of Nicholas, abbot of St. Ouen. For the solace of such a great calamity the just and merciful Lord, among other gifts of his piety, applied the patronage of Blessed Romanus. For the abbot Nicholas of excellent memory, relying on divine gift, in constructing the monastery of Blessed Ouen in elegant work, rejoiced indeed in the presence of that glorious bishop; but he grieved not to have the Relics of his predecessor, Blessed Romanus. For the mass of his body was preserved in the neighbouring basilica of Blessed Mary (which was afterward called of St. Gildard), and the head, as we have mentioned, in the church of Soissons. Wherefore he earnestly besought Christ, king of the Saints, to fulfil the wish of his soul, and to give back so precious a gem to the homeland and to the city. Pondering such things within himself, the said father secretly summoned a certain brother, Nicholas by name, and fatherly enjoined on him a business of this kind: that he should go to the monastery of Blessed Medard at Soissons, and labour by every kind of prayer to extort so great a treasure from the abbot of the place, Odo by name, long his most familiar friend. He adds also to the prayers gifts, precious for the adornment of the church, namely two chasubles of purple, fittingly adorned with gold, a long robe distinguished by its ornament with a superhumeral, precious with gold and stones, a chalice with paten of gold and silver, two candlesticks likewise of gold and silver, also two copes of the best pall adorned with gold embroidery, a dalmatic of white silk, fittingly adorned with gold, and a silk alb.

[36] Translated from Soissons, With these gifts, then, the aforesaid brother set out, earnestly imploring the aid of him who once sent the Archangel Raphael to Tobias for his advantage. And when he reached the place, he sought private conversation with the abbot and disclosed in order the desire of his father. Then for the sake of winning his request, he brought forward the gifts of his fatherly blessing. Which that abbot gladly embracing and weighing the flowing charity of so great a father, taking the counsel of the brothers, decreed that the petition of his lover should be done, yet with royal authority. Without delay, going to the palace, he made known the matter to Philip, king of the Franks, and, having received licence, returned in haste to the monastery. Then, at his command, by the sacristan of the church and by certain elders the sacred treasury is unlocked with the highest humility and humble veneration and the relics of the Saints are brought forth, fragrant with the odour of balsam: namely the ambrosial head of Blessed Romanus and the right arm of Blessed Gildard and of his other limbs, a great part also of the body of Blessed Remigius and Relics of Blessed Medard and of the Holy Innocents, and of St. Serenus the Confessor and of St. Bandaridus, bishop and Confessor. These things are handed over by the abbot and his monks with royal authority, an oath being taken, lest any doubt about them should creep upon anyone, to Brother Nicholas, and are transmitted to the church of Blessed Ouen to be held eternally.

[37] It is carried with solemn procession: Then the aforesaid brother, crowned with heavenly abundance, returned exulting to his home, and drawing near to the city sent a messenger ahead to the abbot, who, greatly rejoicing in the Lord, went at once to the venerable bishop of the same metropolis, William, and disclosed the event of the matter in order. And he, giving thanks to the Redeemer for his benefits, went festively with clergy and people to meet the Relics of the Saints, and reverently met them on the neighbouring mount of St. Michael. Where, while they stayed a little, the aforesaid bishop set forth to the whole people the gifts of divine largesse, and showed to all the head of their once glorious bishop. Then all, prostrate to the ground, bless the Lord, by whose favouring grace many advantages come to the peoples on the same day. The discordant are joined in peace, the rights of broken peace are renewed, the restorers of lawful money and those who receive coins in business only at their pleasure, which greatly burdened the people, are henceforth forbidden by divine authority, plunderers of the church are struck with the sword of anathema, the upright in heart are gladdened by divine blessing, our glorious Lord is magnified in his Saints. There were present in this splendid assembly with the aforesaid bishop Abbot Nicholas with the swarm of his monks, Abbot Walter of the same Mount with his congregation, and several other abbots and monks, and an innumerable multitude of nobles of both sexes. So then with hymns and praises the pledges of the Saints are carried into the city, and are honourably laid in the church of Blessed Ouen. The Norman land rejoices, illustrated by the head of its shepherd, in which were eyes irradiated by the splendour of the sun of justice and vigilant and open for watching over the house of Israel, whose lips, the more precious, are a scarlet band, at times suffused with the redness of martyrdom for the testimony of truth and distilling for the sweetness of preaching. Which excellent head finally, joined to its body in the resurrection of the just and united to Christ the most precious head, will be filled with the unspeakable vision of the Holy Trinity, for whom from its first nature it burned with wonderful love. The day was the eighth of the Lord's Resurrection, and the year the one thousand and ninetieth of the Incarnation of our same Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns as God through all ages of ages. Amen.

[38] The sacred remains, visited at various times, How often after this translation the Relics of St. Romanus were visited, both those which rested in the metropolitan building and those in that of St. Ouen, is not clear to me: among the Bollandist papers, besides the visitation made on the 5th before the kalends of July 1184, of which we treated above at no. 31, Radulf Roussel, in the year 1444, on Friday the 21st of August, visited the monastery of St. Ouen: which is placed in the archiepiscopal archive in these words: On that Friday the said Most Reverend Father Lord archbishop, his cross going before etc., set out to the said monastery for the sake of visitation… Likewise he visited the treasury of the church, where he found several bodies of Saints with holy Relics rather honourably and reverently, both in reliquaries and otherwise, and among other things the head of the most blessed Romanus

he kissed. And in the year 1537, on the 22nd of November, Jean Calenge, claustral prior (the abbot then, a commendatory, as it is commonly said, was Innocenzo Cibo, nephew through a brother of Pope Innocent VIII Gallia Christiana, volume XI, column 154.) with other monks visited the treasury, and found preserved in it the head of St. Romanus.

[39] In the year 1562 the Calvinists burn them; But after a brief course of years the Relics, preserved with such great care and veneration for more than nine hundred years, perished by the crime of men. After the middle of the sixteenth century civil war shook the whole of France: the cause of the war was the right arrogated by the Calvinists of subduing both the civil and the ecclesiastical commonwealth. After skirmishes of words and counsels, the matter began to tend to arms, which, as they are everyday things, favoured now the Catholics, now the Calvinists. In the year 1562, on the 16th of April, the Calvinists occupy the city of Rouen, and on Sunday the 3rd of May they rush into the metropolitan building, at the time when the capitular Mass was being sung [Fallue, Histoire de l'Église métropolitaine de Rouen, volume III, page 244; Pommeraye, Histoire de la cathédrale de Rouen, page 111.], they shatter the sacred images and the gratings of the chapels, and lay waste the church by fire: on the following days they make a list of all the precious furniture, and, soldiers being posted, keep it for themselves in custody. Finally on the 8th of July, by the aid of two goldsmiths, they despoil the reliquary of St. Romanus of gold and precious stones, and consign the sacred body itself to the flames [Histoire de la ville de Rouen, par un solitaire, volume I, page 153. Compare Floquet, Histoire du Privilège de Saint Romain, volume I, page 301.]. But already before, namely on the 18th day of their irruption into the city of Rouen, or the 3rd of May, the flames had consumed the head of St. Romanus. This François Pommeraye reports in his History of the abbey of St. Ouen from a witness, as it seems, with his own eyes, which we too render from the French language into Latin Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Ouen, page 205.: On Sunday, says the witness, the 3rd of May 1562, the Huguenots, massed in a dense crowd, armed and furious, came to the church of St. Ouen: having entered, they destroyed the seats of the choir, the high altar and the chapels; they shattered the clock, whose wooden traces still exist in the chapel next to the northern arch, and the organs, whose lead and tin, suitable for making bullets, they carried off. Then, five fires being lit, three in the church itself, two next to it, they burned the seats of the monks, the columns and gratings of the altars, very many sacred vestments, copes, tunics, chasubles, albs: while the more precious garments, adorned with gold and silver, were likewise burned in the inn of the Pine (hotellerie de la pomme de pin) for the extraction of the metals. The same was the lot of the Relics, the gold, silver and precious stones having first however been set aside. They also broke the pulpit, most skilfully carved and decorated with figures: the same befell the bronze gratings, of wonderful beauty: and as many images of the Saints as they could find they shattered and overturned. The head of St. Romanus, placed on a bier, surrounded with straw torches, they carried to the mint and there threw onto a pyre.

[40] Yet so that certain particles Further, although the devastation of the sacred Relics was so great, not all, however, perished. For on the night following the 3rd of May the Catholics, searching the pyre into which they had been thrown, collected ashes and fragments of bone, without it being possible to discern which belonged to which Saint, and they were laid together mixed in a new feretory. When therefore Louis XIII in the year 1638 asked of the chapter of Rouen a particle, however small, of the body of St. Romanus, the canons answered that all had been destroyed in the time of the rebellion; yet that they were sending some particles extracted from the reliquaries, such as they are (telles qu'on les put trouver) Fallue, volume IV, page 111; Floquet, volume I, page 301.. A little later the chapter of Rouen recovered part of the body of St. Romanus by exchange: the Benedictine prior of Isle-Adam (Isle-Adam) gave, for other Relics, the remains that he had of St. Victricius, St. Evodius and St. Romanus Fallue, volume IV, page 217.. Indeed in the following century a new donation repaired, or at least mitigated, the loss of the Calvinist plundering; when Terrisse, dean of the chapter, in the year 1776 offered to the metropolitan church a bone of St. Romanus, preserved until then in the monastery of Saint-Victor in Caux, and formerly by Rotrod, who, as we showed above at no. 30, transferred the body of St. Romanus into another and more precious reliquary in the year 1179, and gave some part to the monks of Saint-Victor Floquet, volume I, page 302..

[41] Surviving Nor did the monastery of St. Ouen, despoiled of its treasure by a like calamity, lack its good fortune. For there had been preserved some bones of St. Romanus in a little reliquary, which lay hidden in the sacristy of the same church until the year 1654; when Jean de Malevant, bishop of Olena (a diocese under the metropolis of Patras in Achaia), vicar general of the archbishop of Rouen, François de Harlay, invited to consecrate certain altars moved from their place in the church of St. Ouen, visited the little reliquary, and found in it some vertebrae, an ulna, a fibula, and one vertebra of the neck, to which last, by a pin infected with much rust, was affixed a little parchment label with these words: Relics of Saint Romanus archbishop of Rouen. The said bishop declared the first three Relics to be of St. Ouen, the latter of St. Romanus; and for that reason he laid some particles in the sepulchre of the altar Pommeraye, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Ouen, page 209.. Whether the feretory of St. Romanus exists today can be disputed. The distinguished A. Deville judged that the reliquary is preserved until now; but he seems to be deceived; since that which he thought to be of St. Romanus is more truly of All Saints Floquet, volume II, pages 588 and 595. Compare ibid., page 338.. Yet this reliquary is said even now to contain part of the skull of St. Romanus with a large bone of St. Hildevert, bishop of Meaux, of whom our men have treated under the 27th of May Acta Sanctorum, volume VI of May, page 712.. But since the ancient instruments, which would establish trust, have perished, Cardinal Hubert Cambacérès, the first archbishop of Rouen after the Concordat, ordered a new instrument to be drawn up Floquet, volume II, page 586.. How this preservation of a part of the skull can be combined with what we reported above at no. 39 from the monk of St. Ouen I do not clearly perceive. Certainly François Pommeraye, who, as we saw in the preceding number, accurately describes the particles of Relics found by chance, would not seem likely to have omitted it, if a part of the head had escaped the impious hands of the Calvinists.

[42] And the first tomb itself remained: More fortunate among these vicissitudes of things was the lot of the original tomb of St. Romanus, which we have said was of jasper. When further William the Good Soul had transferred the body of the holy bishop, drawn out of the old tomb, into a precious reliquary, to be preserved in his cathedral church, he left the jasper tomb in the church of St. Gildard: it passed by the fury of the Calvinists and exists intact until now. It is hollowed out of one piece of jasper, seven and a half feet long, two feet and two inches wide, two feet and four inches high: and if we measure the internal hollow itself, it will be six feet in length, seventeen inches in width, and as much in height: and it is raised above the ground on two stone bases of two feet [Histoire de la ville de Rouen, par un solitaire, volume IV, page 134; Mauléon, Voyage liturgique, page 416.]. This tomb was always held in great honour, although empty: whence there flowed an epigraph, whose last words are Pommeraye, Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen, page 130.:

Come, orphaned crowd, and glide to the widowed stones, It is something for offspring to have their father's couch.

At last when after the concordat the church of the Discalced Carmelites, at first erected under the invocation of SS. Louis and Mary Magdalene Histoire de la ville de Rouen, par un solitaire, volume VI, page 129., had been designated as a city parish, it took the name of St. Romanus, and in the year 1804 the jasper tomb of the Saint was translated into it Fallue, volume I, page 63..

[43] St. Romanus is the principal patron of the Church of Rouen; St. Romanus, although he had various predecessors illustrious for the glory of holiness and deeds, especially SS. Nicasius and Mello, who are by right and merit to be held the founders of the Church of Rouen, is nevertheless venerated as the principal patron of the city and diocese, whose feast alone is therefore celebrated through a whole eight days, as can be seen in the Breviary formerly published by order of Archbishop de Tressan, and his name is recited first among the bishops of Rouen who are invoked in the Litanies of Holy Saturday Pommeraye, Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen, page 130.. The cause of this excellence Pommeraye assigns to this, that St. Romanus completed the work begun by his predecessors, namely by abolishing the traces of idolatry that still survived Ibid., place cited.. Hence also it came about that the pious and holy institutions at Rouen took their name from St. Romanus. So in the metropolitan church there were thirty prebends assigned to women, who were therefore called Canonesses of St. Romanus. Formerly, as it seems, they had the care of the linen furnishings, whence they had the means of living honourably. Afterward, the care of the linens being abolished, the burdens of the prebends were reduced to attendance at three anniversaries, to be celebrated on the 15th of January, on the feast of St. Maurus the abbot, on the 23rd, the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on the 11th of July, on the feast of the Translation of St. Benedict, for which each canoness received six pounds of Tours, provided that she had been present at the Vigils on the previous day and at the Mass on the day itself, in which they approached at the Offertory. Each received letters of institution from the archbishop himself, and even women of more ample fortune sought the benefice, however slight, because they shared in the privileges of the chapter [Histoire de la ville de Rouen, par un solitaire, volume III, page 86; Mauléon, Voyage liturgique, page 374.].

[44] And in his honour a pious confraternity Likewise in honour of St. Romanus in the year 1292 there was erected by the minor canons of the metropolitan church of Rouen a sodality or confraternity, whose aim was to aid clerics oppressed by need. The instrument of erection, lying hidden until now, D. Floquet has made public in his History of the Privilege of St. Romanus, and from it we shall pick out certain things Histoire du Privilège de Saint Romain, volume II, page 603.. The chapter of Rouen, then, the deanship being vacant, sets out that eight minor canons, namely of fifteen marks and fifteen pounds … kindled with zeal of faith, considering and piously attending to the fact that in times gone by many of the choir of Rouen, priests as well as deacons, subdeacons, formerly beneficed in the church of Rouen; who in the time when they lived had been of praiseworthy life and honest conduct, had come to such misfortune of poverty, that their own means did not suffice for their sustenance, nor had they at the end of their life the means of having their funeral rites carried out according to the custom of the Church of Rouen,

indeed they had, under the pressure of need, to be carried to the House of God *, and there to have and receive an as it were dishonourable burial, which turned, when it so happened, to the disgrace and reproach of the said church. To wipe out this disgrace and reproach, the aforesaid minor canons humbly beseech the chapter of Rouen to allow them to institute and have a confraternity or fraternity in the church of Rouen, in honour of the holy archbishops and also patrons of the same Church, Nicasius, Mello, Romanus, Ouen, Ansbert, Victricius, and other Saints, patrons of the Church of Rouen. Wherefore the chapter, wishing to concur in the pious work, grants them to have and institute a confraternity or fraternity in honour of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the aforesaid Saints, among whom the minor canons wished to have the most blessed Romanus as chief lord and master of their fraternity, that they might be helped by the prayers before the Lord of him who assiduously prays for the people and for this city.

[45] Was erected in the year 1292. In the rest of the instrument there are then prescribed divine Offices and prayers to be performed by each of the members both in common and privately: next the service of honest burial, or even assistance, to be shown to the members, if by chance, not by their own act, they should have come to poverty: there are also established fines for those absent without legitimate hindrance, and money to be given at the reception of each, that is five shillings of Tours, which go to the sodality: finally it is ordained in what way the money of the sodality is to be preserved and expended. In the whole instrument nothing occurs to indicate that presence at the procession of St. Romanus, which, as we shall show below, was celebrated every year, was enjoined on the members. But in other statutes of the year 1346 the members are commanded to help in carrying the body of St. Romanus Histoire du Privilège de Saint Romain, volume II, page 610.. As the devotion of ancestral faith decreased in the course of time, the members of St. Romanus came to this point, that they were ashamed of the name and office, and so sought the dissolution of the sodality itself: indeed without consulting the metropolitan chapter, they even carried off the sacred furnishings. The matter was referred to the supreme judges, who adjudged all the goods of the sodality, movable and immovable, to the hospice of the poor Fallue, volume IV, page 383..

* Hôtel Dieu

§ IV. On the privilege of the Feretory, or of St. Romanus; its origin, fortunes and rite.

The origin of the yearly liberation of one prisoner For establishing and confirming the primacy of St. Romanus among the manifold Saints who have made the Church of Rouen illustrious, and whom in turn the Church of Rouen venerates, not the least contribution, in my opinion, seems to have been made by the singular privilege which that Church enjoyed in honour of St. Romanus: it is commonly called the Privilege of St. Romanus or the Privilege of the feretory (Privilege de S. Romain, Privilege de la Fierte). This privilege consisted in this, that every year the chapter of Rouen had the right of freeing from chains and from death one who had already been condemned by capital sentence, on this condition however, that he should raise the reliquary or feretory of St. Romanus three times and carry it for some time. The Rouen privilege was very often troubled by its controversies, it resounded in the courts, it was debated back and forth in written books for each man's opinion. Nicolas Rigault, of whom we treated above at no. 5, from the edition of the Life written by Fulbert seized the handle for attacking the privilege of St. Romanus, inasmuch as, as he himself writes in the dedicatory letter to Sillery, chancellor of France, the clergy of Rouen, deceived and deluded by a most vain fable, obtained diplomas of the most Christian princes under an ambitious pretext of religion. These and other no less crude things, brought forward by Rigault, stirred the bile of Adrien Behotte, great archdeacon of Rouen, who in the same year, 1609, in which Rigault's Life came forth, published a little book, rather of one indignant than confirming the fact. Therefore in weighing this question we judge that a middle way is to be held, so that we admit neither all the accusations of the one, nor the vindications of the other. Wherefore first of all we shall inquire into the very origin of the privilege, then into its progress and finally into its rite. We shall follow as chief guide the distinguished A. Floquet, who in two volumes has embraced with singular diligence the whole history of this privilege Histoire du Privilège de Saint Romain, volume II, Rouen 1833..

[47] Is commonly attributed to a dragon killed by St. Romanus: The popular narrative, which they say gave origin to the Rouen privilege, is about this, if we neglect the slighter circumstances. In the times of King Dagobert it happened that a serpent of wonderful size, lodging in a marshy place near the city of Rouen, devoured men and beasts of burden, nor was it safe for the citizens to go out of the city. Blessed Romanus, pitying so great a calamity, resolved to meet the huge evil. He took, then, from prison a criminal, infamous for many crimes and consigned to certain death: going out of the city with him, when he reached the lair of the beast, he tamed it with the sign of the cross, and, binding it with his priestly stole, handed it over to the criminal to be led into the city. When they had come there, the serpent was given to the fire, and its ashes scattered in the adjacent river. Suddenly the fame of so great a miracle pervaded the whole kingdom, and seized the admiration of the king and his whole court. Dagobert, to be better informed of the whole matter, called St. Romanus to him: and when he came and narrated the matter as it had taken place, the king willed that in memory of so great a miracle the Church of Rouen should have the right of freeing every year on the day of the Ascension one malefactor guilty of death. This the popular tradition has, with some adjuncts indeed changed. For so it is said by others that the serpent was cast from a bridge into the Seine, flowing past Rouen: that Romanus asked for two malefactors, but that one consented, to whom his life was afterward granted. But these are slight, and do not touch the vitals of the narrative.

[48] Which indeed on account of the silence of writers, Now it must be inquired how highly this narrative is to be esteemed, which is the foundation of the privilege of St. Romanus. The cited Rigault traduces it as a most ineptly fabricated fable: Le Cointe is more modest at the year 635, § VII, saying that many think it a fiction. The arguments of the two are about these, the silence of the biographers of St. Romanus; next that a serpent in Greek is called Ὑδραν, derived also into the Latin language as Hydra, which, St. Isidore writes in book XII of the Etymologies or Origins Migne, Patrologia, volume LXXII, column 445., is a serpent with nine heads, which in Latin is called excetra, because when one was cut off three heads grew. But it is established that the hydra was a place vomiting forth waters that laid waste the neighbouring city, in which, one channel being closed, many broke out, which Hercules seeing, he burned up the places themselves and so closed the channels of the water, for hydra is named from water. Since therefore St. Romanus averted from the city of Rouen the calamity of the flooding Seine, both by prayers and, probably, by embankments; from this is said to have arisen the fiction of a serpent or dragon, laying waste everything, bound and tamed by the power of the holy bishop. At Rouen this beast, such as it was, was called gargouille: which word is also used commonly in the architectural art to signify stone channels, outlets of rain water flowing down from roofs, perhaps because in Gothic buildings they generally fashion them exhibiting animals, dragons and beasts of that kind. Moreover Gargalia in Du Cange at this word is a part of the throat and the windpipe of the lung, which suits outlet channels well enough.

[49] Who ought to have spoken, The negative argument, which borrows its force from the silence of contemporaries, has already been treated and retreated so often that it ought not to be handed back here in this place: and it is sufficiently agreed among the learned that it is of some moment only when authors are silent when they ought to have spoken. Nor further can we admit that the silence of ancient authors was so deep, as Rigault and Le Cointe would have it. For it is known from the ancient Lives, with which the Rigault Life too chimes in, both that St. Romanus halted the overflowing Seine, and that, the shrine being destroyed, he purified a place sacred to Venus. Here are the words of Rigault Folio 11.: But after he had obtained the pontifical see, the crowd of that people, a counsel being soon taken, came, compelled by necessity, and unanimously, prostrate on the ground, asked the Blessed bishop to come to the aid of their calamity. For there was next to the city itself on the northern side, built in stonework in the manner of an amphitheatre, a height of walled structure, in which a subterranean cave offered a narrow way to those entering: that subterranean house was girded with shadowy vaults; this they called the dwelling of Venus on account of the uses of harlots. But above, within the circuit of the outer wall, a spacious area lay open, in whose (summit?) a shrine, constructed with artful work, stood out, in which an altar stood in a higher place, and above it the title of Venus: of which place they said that the murmur of unclean spirits was often heard; but it could not be perceived by the sight of man, because from the very chasm a sulphurous whirl breathed out foul vapours and intolerable stenches, with which the horror of pitchy flame, breaking out, often laid waste the buildings of the neighbouring city with savage fire, and killed many with smoke-bearing odour. These things, if we inspect the matter itself, stripped of its adjuncts, agree well with what we reported above at no. 47 of a serpent of wonderful size, lodging in a marshy place near the city of Rouen, which devoured men and beasts of burden.

[50] And on account of like narratives of other Saints But if we compare these things with the narrative of the metrical Life, we shall find the same, except that some monster killed by the Saint is more openly indicated: for at no. 6, after St. Romanus had purified the foul place, the poet adds: There the terrified snake, bloodless, lost its force, or serpent. Whence it is clear from what source the narrative of the serpent or dragon, vanquished by St. Romanus, could be derived. The question returns, then, whether this serpent or dragon, such as it was, is to be taken in figure or in truth: the author of the metrical Life, it is abundantly evident, passed the calamity off metaphorically through a snake: and so we see what matter underlies the popular tradition. Moreover the popular tradition of the serpent killed by St. Romanus is greatly damaged by the silence both of the biographers, as many as we know, all of them, and especially of Orderic Vitalis, who could not have passed over in silence so celebrated an event, if they had really known it: for it was the foundation of the distinguished privilege in which the see of Rouen gloried among the other Churches. Next this same history is attributed to various Saints, chiefly to those who destroyed idolatry: so Paul, bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon in Armorica, at the 12th of March, is read to have thrown into the sea a serpent of wonderful size in the island of Batha (Batz), a priestly stole being put around it Acta Sanctorum, volume II of March, page 118.: Jovinus or Joava, a presbyter, at the 2nd of March, with a like stole killed a monster that spared neither men nor beasts of burden Ibid., volume I of March, page 140.: Julian of Le Mans, at the 27th of January, a serpent that by its sulphurous breath and the blow of its atrocious tail was urging to death phalanxes of those devoted to it, relegated by the sign of the cross to places lacking human cultivation Ibid., volume II of January, page 765.: Beatus, venerated at Vendôme (Vendome) on the 9th of May, a serpent of wonderful size, … great destruction both in men

and in beasts of burden perpetrating … relying on divine aid, destroyed Ibid., volume II, page 566.: Clement, first bishop of Metz, rooted out serpents hostile to men, lodging in an amphitheatre, the greatest of which he bound with his priestly stole and cast them all headlong into the river [Histoire de l'Église de Metz, by a Benedictine of Saint-Vanne, volume I, page 205.]: Martha, the hostess of Christ, at the 29th of July, subdued a huge dragon, the ruin of lands and waters, with holy water and her virginal girdle Acta Sanctorum, volume VII of July, page 11.: Samson, bishop of Dol, at the 28th of July, gave headlong into the sea a serpent laying waste everything Ibid., volume VI of July, page 586.: Nigasius or Nicasius, whom the people of Rouen reckon among their bishops, at the 11th of October, subdued a serpent netted in a priestly stole Ibid., volume V of October, page 513.: Amandus, bishop of Maastricht, at the 6th of February, while still a boy, drove off by the sign of the cross a serpent of wonderful size from the island of Ogia Ibid., volume I of February, page 849.: Vigor, bishop of Bayeux, at the 1st of November, cast into the sea a huge serpent, which with its breath burned both men and many cattle, by throwing his stole upon it Surius at the 1st of November..

[51] Does not seem to be admitted: Many other examples of the same portent could be brought forward; but I have preferred to seek these in the Gauls alone, without having adduced them all. Now no one will easily believe that in these portents it is a question of beasts in the true sense of the name, that exist in the nature of things: for who has found anything similar in natural history, that a serpent should involve a whole region in calamity and ruin. But if anyone should say that such beasts are real demons, clothed in sensible form; I say that we then have before us a merely incorporeal thing, which artists have tried to express by a bodily form, as may commonly be seen in the images of St. Michael the Archangel, who tramples under his feet a demon, ordinarily a dragon or serpent; surely this invisible fight is expressed by a visible figure. And from this I judge that the popular tradition arose, which carried metaphor over into truth. St. Romanus wiped out the last traces of idolatry, still cultivated at Rouen; he also restrained, by prayers and perhaps by placing embankments, the Seine, which often laid waste the city, and in this way turned a great calamity away from his people, and for this reason long after his death the voice of the people magnified his name. Nor do we seize such an interpretation out of the air, as it is commonly said. For among the coins of Constantine the Great there occurs one, whose reverse exhibits a serpent crushed by the labarum, on which is placed the monogram of Christ, with the inscription spes publica Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum, volume VIII, page 88.. After whose example too Majorian, having obtained the empire in the year 457, struck a coin, on whose reverse the emperor himself with a cross-bearing spear crushes a serpent, with the words: victoria augg Ibid., page 195; Baronius at the year 325, § CCVI.. No one will deduce from such coins that Constantine or Majorian killed some serpent, but rather that they destroyed idolatry, as history shows. Whoever wishes to know more about these Serpent-slaying Saints, let him consult what our predecessors have discussed at large in the Acts of St. George the Martyr at the 23rd of April Acta Sanctorum, volume III of April, page 104..

[52] It is nevertheless certain that in the twelfth century, To the Rouen tradition it is also an obstacle that no trace of the privilege of St. Romanus is found from the seventh century, in which the Saint died, to the twelfth: and indeed, as we have already noted, Orderic Vitalis, wholly intent on magnifying the Church of Rouen, could not have passed over so singular a privilege; the very verses attributed to St. Romanus are also colourless, when they ought to have celebrated the signal deed, if it existed Orderic Vitalis, volume II, page 345.:

St. Romanus, noble in splendid deed, * Shone forth in character, and in the light of the sacred word too.

But whatever be the case with the origin of the privilege, it is nevertheless certain that it existed and persisted to these latest times. The first elements are furnished by a letter of the archbishop of Rouen and of William de la Chapelle, castellan of Arques, testifying that the privilege was in force in the times of Henry II and Richard I, dukes of Normandy, from the year 1151 to 1199. For Philip Augustus, king of France, on obtaining Normandy, wished to be certain whether the Rouen privilege rested on a legitimate custom, which ought not to be abolished.

[53] As is established from the instrument alleged In the manuscripts of the royal library these things are found Floquet, volume II, page 601.: In the year 1210 the controversy over the privilege of Saint Romanus, which had arisen between the chapter and the king's castellan, Archbishop Robert and William de la Chapelle, castellan of Arques, judges given by King Philip, put down by a sentence passed in favour of the Church. There exist on this matter the following letters to the prince in the cartulary of the chapter. To the reverend Philip, by the grace of God illustrious king of the Franks, Robert, by divine permission archbishop of Rouen, and William de la Chapelle, castellan of Arques, greeting etc. Let your excellency know that according to the tenor of your letters, which you transmitted to us, we convened before us, at St. Ouen, on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul just past, Henry the cantor, Ralph the archdeacon and Walter of Chesnay, canons, John de Préaux, Luke son of John and Robert de Fresquienne, knights, Lawrence of Ylio and John Luke, citizens of Rouen. These aforesaid before us, the holy Gospels being touched, solemnly swore that concerning the contention that was turning between you and the chapter of Rouen about the prisoner, whom the same chapter was demanding of you, they would declare to us the truth of the matter, in good faith according to their consciences. Who, being sworn, said unanimously that in the times of Henry and Richard, kings of England, they never saw any contention on that matter.

[54] Here in this instrument, But when the procession passed, on the day of the Ascension, through the castle, the canons went to the door of the prison, and all who were in the prison were put outside the prison, and whichever of them the canons wished to free they chose, if he had not been seized for treason against the Lord King. And they said that when King Richard was in captivity, they did not have a prisoner in that year, and that they refrained in that year from putting his bailiffs under interdict on account of the king's captivity. But when the king was freed, they had two prisoners, for that year and for the year past. And therefore according to your mandate we have judged that the prisoner whom they chose must be given up. May your serenity fare well in the Lord. King Richard, returning from Palestine, was a captive in Austria from the year 1192 to 1194. Someone will perhaps wonder that no mention is made of St. Romanus in the letter recited, indeed it could come into suspicion that so great a privilege was not originally assigned for the merits of the holy bishop. But such a doubt is easily cleared away by another letter or Charter of the same year 1210, in which Richard, a knight, called abbot of St. Medard, declares that he was freed from prison on the day of the Ascension of the Lord in regard to the glorious Virgin Mary and Blessed Romanus; wherefore by the gift of God and the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Blessed Romanus, and devoted with deserved gratitude to the whole Church of Rouen, he makes various donations Ibid., volume II, page 602..

[55] Existed; The first traces of the privilege of St. Romanus that can be gathered, then, lead back to the middle of the twelfth century, or to the times of Henry II and Richard I, kings of England; without my saying for that reason that it first began then. For the witnesses called in the letter to King Philip swore that it was then in force, and thus that the beginnings of the privilege are to be referred to more distant times. That the author of the privilege was Dagobert I depends in great part on the history of the slain dragon, of which we have treated above: St. Ouen, namely, still referendary of the king, having narrated the portent and the bishop being called to court, both obtained and wrote the privilege. But if this is so, the more does the persistent silence of the biographers and historians stupefy me concerning a matter so prodigious and singular, so that to have kept silent seems to have denied. Since indeed we cannot certainly establish the beginning of the privilege, this is certain, that it was in force from the twelfth century and persisted to the end of the eighteenth century, or to the year 1790, in which Nicolas Béhérie or Béhérei and his wife Marie Anne Pinel, condemned to death for homicide, were freed from punishment by the benefit of the feretory of St. Romanus. But so distinguished a privilege was bounded by certain limits: thus in the charter of Archbishop Robert cited above, he was already deprived of the benefit of the feretory who had been seized for treason against the lord king, and thus who had committed the crime of lèse-majesté. And in truth the secular magistracy frequently laboured either openly or secretly and as it were by circuitous means to infringe the privilege: of which matter we bring forward some examples.

[56] And although questions were often raised In the year 1207, the prefect of the city of Rouen holding back a prisoner on whom the metropolitan chapter had conferred the privilege of St. Romanus, the whole city was subjected to ecclesiastical interdict, which was not lifted, although the king himself acted whether by prayers or by threats and embassy, until the prefect himself restored the prisoner in full session of the canons Ibid., volume I, page 70.. In the year 1299 it had been provided before the judges of the Exchequer (Echiquier), or supreme tribunal, that they should order no capital sentence carried out before the canons had chosen their prisoner to be freed: nevertheless Robert d'Auberbosc was condemned to death, and was being dragged to punishment, when he was led back to prison, without however being freed, the chapter choosing another Floquet, volume I, page 70.. Something similar happened in the year 1302: the judges had refused to restore Nicolas Letonnelier to the prison of Rouen; in turn the canons refused to choose a prisoner to be freed: while the suit was pending, the remains of St. Romanus remained exposed in the public palace for three whole days: the prisoner was at last restored, yet not freed, but William de Montguerard received the benefit of the feretory Ibid., page 72.. And when in the year 1361 the bailiff or praetor of Rouen, between the feast of Easter and the Ascension, in which interval capital sentences were prohibited, had secretly set up an inquiry against a certain Roger Letailleur or Letellier, and had dared to behead him, the chapter of Rouen subjected the praetor to sentence of excommunication, nor was he absolved from the bonds of censure until, the crime being acknowledged, he had obtained pardon from the canons Ibid., page 81.. He who had been freed by the privilege of the feretory escaped not only capital sentence, but also confiscation of goods and pecuniary fines Ibid., page 88..

[57] And complaints; In the year 1394 a new question was raised: namely whether accomplices of a freed prisoner, even hitherto unknown, should in like manner attain the benefit of liberation. Jean Maignart had obtained the privilege, when it became known that accomplices were still lying hidden, and on inquiry various ones were found. The question was referred to King Charles VI, who solved it by his decree, declaring that accomplices too share in the privilege Ibid., page 100.. Further, when

Henry V and after him his son Henry VI, kings of England, had occupied Normandy, the privilege was inquired into anew in the years 1420 and 1425: and the canons of Rouen won their case Ibid., pages 116 and 134.. The victory of the chapter was further strengthened by Charles VIII, king of France, present at Rouen, before whom a man guilty of homicide raised the feretory in the year 1485 and attained complete liberation Ibid., page 189.. A little later, in the year 1497, Collinet Petrelay, while, imprisoned for a crime, he was being taken from the prison to the castle, had slipped away in flight. The suspicious canons charged that one had been withdrawn from their choice. But the canons were mistaken, and, better informed, they admitted the excuse for the flight, to be imputed to the guards alone.

[58] Indeed, in the course of time In the year 1499 the Norman Exchequer, until then ambulatory, whose judges sat for an uncertain time and were themselves uncertain, passed into a permanent tribunal. The former judges, then, temporary and often absent from the city, did not dare to provoke a conflict with the metropolitan chapter, most tenacious of its right: but the later ones, secure of themselves and fortified with the supreme authority of the king in passing sentences, looked askance on the more precious and more gracious authority conferred on the clergy, namely the right of grace, by which the canons of Rouen by their right withdrew those guilty of the gravest crimes from their jurisdiction, and, the judicial process being extinguished, gave them freedom. Already therefore in the year 1501 Louis XII by royal letters had ordered that, if indeed the privilege of St. Romanus were established, the canons of Rouen should be left in peaceful possession. The courtiers acquiesced after a fashion, yet so that they tried to restrict the use of the privilege itself Ibid., page 201.. But the king himself in the month of November 1512 gave an edict, by which he confirmed the privilege of St. Romanus anew and enacted that every year on the day of the Ascension of the Lord the chapter of Rouen should have the right of freeing one prisoner and at the same time his accomplices and helpers Ibid., page 208.. The court of Rouen indeed resisted the edict, and inscribed it in its registers bound with its clauses Ibid., page 214.: but the king by a new edict, given on the 25th of February 1513, decreed that nothing was to be innovated in the privilege Ibid., page 216..

[59] Within narrower limits Nor is it to be denied that the canons sometimes freed such as seemed most unworthy of indulgence; whence also greater weight was added to the complaints that the secular magistracy poured out before the king. And to use an example: in the year 1545 George de Prestreval, who on the very day of the Ascension presented himself to be imprisoned, was at once freed by the privilege of the feretory. And yet, scarcely 23 years old, he was already involved in manifold and enormous crimes. From his absent father, the locks being broken, he had stolen the sum of eight hundred pounds, from his father's tenants, by threatening death, he had extorted all their money, as a forger he had counterfeited his father's writing, having seized the castle named Mesmoulins he had gathered there a band of common fellows, by whose aid he had troubled the neighbouring region with plunderings, a rebel against the royal majesty, he had repelled by force and arms the soldiers sent to put down so great an evil. Laden with so many crimes, on the very day on which George had thrown himself into chains the chapter allowed him to go free. It is no wonder, then, that the secular magistracy wished to throw a barrier against an indulgence sometimes inopportune Ibid., page 263. Compare ibid., pages 326 and 337.. Nevertheless Henry II, king of France, by a new edict of the 28th of April 1554 wished the privilege of St. Romanus to be preserved: which indeed the same king ratified by new letters, given on the 14th of June 1557 and the 9th of March 1559, because the canons had conferred the benefit of the feretory on a relative of Diane de Poitiers, the royal harlot Ibid., pages 274 and 283..

[60] Should be circumscribed, In exercising the privilege of St. Romanus, then, some abuses had crept in, and an advocate pleading for the privilege had gone so far as to say that it was notorious that among the prisoners he was always preferred who was accused of the gravest crimes Ibid., page 421.. And from this it came about that Henry IV gave royal letters on the 25th of January 1597, by which the privilege was circumscribed within narrower limits. In the first place there were excepted the crimes of lèse-majesté, heresy, counterfeiting of coin, premeditated homicide, and the violent rape of virgins. Next, whoever desired to become a sharer in the indulgence ought to report and accuse himself, by no means through a procurator. Third, the accusation of himself had to be made before the denunciation to be made to the judges. Finally, nothing meanwhile prevented the judges from further inquiring into those guilty of crimes, short however of sentence and its execution Ibid., page 424.. The edict displeased the chapter of Rouen the more, in that the king had said in advance that he wished all to be preserved that Louis XII had formerly granted: yet Louis had excepted one crime, namely that of lèse-majesté; while Henry had added various others, as we have seen, to the single exception. The chapter indeed safeguarded its right intact; nevertheless the royal decree of Henry IV stood, by which it came about that thereafter the right of refusing lay in the royal power, if ever the canons exceeded the fixed limits Floquet, volume I, page 425.. And in fact in the year 1670 a certain nobleman, Baudry de Bois-Caumont, the killer of a certain de la Bunaudière, hoped that he would obtain the benefit of the feretory: but Louis XIV wrote both to the chapter and to the judges that such an indulgence should not be granted: they obeyed, canons and courtiers Ibid., volume II, page 28..

[61] It persisted until the year 1791: Indeed when a little afterward, or in the year 1672, the question of abolishing, or at least of mutilating, the privilege of St. Romanus was again treated before the king, the canons carried this one thing as the greatest victory, that it should be preserved by the norm of the edict of Henry IV Ibid., page 33.. For the judges were pressing at the royal court that the decision of letting go or retaining a prisoner should lie with them, and that it should no longer be free to the canons of Rouen to intercede with the king himself, when the judges had refused to dismiss someone. When therefore everything had been prepared so that the petition of the judges of Rouen might be held ratified and firm by royal edict; yet nothing came forth, and matters remained in their ancient state, but with this clause, that the canons profess that it belongs to the tribunal alone (parlement) to have cognizance of those who according to the edict of Henry IV are worthy or unworthy of the privilege of the feretory Ibid., page 35.. And so the privilege persevered, although with certain hindrances interposed, until the year 1790, in which, as we have said, there were last freed two spouses, who in a domestic altercation with a neighbour had killed him unhappily rather than maliciously Ibid., page 538.. For in the year 1791, the legitimate shepherd of the Church of Rouen being in exile, there had been intruded into his see Louis Charrier de la Roche (later, having sincerely and by public letters renounced the schism, bishop of Versailles): and he, although, the chapter being destroyed, he admitted that the privilege had perished, yet asked that the custom of indulgence be preserved. The judges, to whom Louis had addressed his petition, uncertain what to do, consult the supreme minister of Justice, as it is called, Duport, who by a letter given at Paris on the 30th of May 1791 answers that among the other privileges the Privilege of St. Romanus too had been abolished, and thus that the feretory would thereafter procure no indulgence Ibid., page 153..

[62] The solemn rite of Liberation We come to the third question, which we undertook to solve, or to the very rite by which the prisoner was dismissed free from chains through the privilege of St. Romanus. First of all, on the Monday after the octave of Easter the chapter designated four canons, who were to intimate or denounce the privilege of St. Romanus to the secular jurisdiction. These on the Monday of the third week of Easter, in choir dress, their apparitor going before, went to the tribunals, and, being admitted, in the words of the chapter denounced the privilege. The royal procurator generally acquiesced in the canons' petition, yet sometimes he censured the privilege rather bitterly. Nevertheless the judges decreed the privilege ratified and to be carried out Ibid., page 168.. Then on the three days of the Rogations and on the morning of the very day of the Lord's Ascension, two delegates of the chapter visited the prisons and questioned all the prisoners Ibid., page 197., whose confession was secret almost in the manner of sacramental confession Ibid., page 201.. On the very day of the Ascension, further, at the eighth hour of the morning the chapter assembled Ibid., page 215., and the delegates or commissioners reported the confessions of the imprisoned, among whom, the grace of the Holy Spirit being first invoked, by a plurality of votes the chapter chose the one to be freed from prison and punishment Ibid., page 221.. When this had been done, the archbishop inscribed the name of the chosen prisoner on a slip, which, sealed with green wax, was carried to the judges by the chaplain of St. Romanus. The canons meanwhile remained shut in, until the answer of the judges had been returned Ibid., page 229..

[63] Is explained. Meanwhile after the slip of liberation had been opened, all the instruments of the criminal suit were read before the judges, and the royal procurator having been heard, by a majority of votes the tribunal declared the one to be freed worthy or unworthy of the privilege of the feretory Ibid., page 260.. In which latter case, the chapter chose a new one to be freed. Finally, all things being completed, the judges declared that the one chosen by the chapter could enjoy the privilege for the crimes confessed, but not for others Ibid., page 271.. When this had been done, the one to be freed was led to the place called the Old Tower (Vieille Tour), the ancient palace of the dukes of Normandy, in the front of which there is a platform seventy-five feet high, to which the one to be freed ascended, so that he could easily be seen by the whole people. There he awaited the solemn procession, in which the reliquary of St. Romanus was carried, and when the clergy had arrived there, the one to be freed, with knees bent, recited the Confiteor, and the celebrant, with his hand placed on his head, said Misereatur and Indulgentiam, and ordered him gently to lift the reliquary three times, which he then bore on his shoulders as far as the metropolitan church Ibid., page 290.. Finally the one freed was crowned with garlands of flowers, certain ones more shameful than every punishment Ibid., page 336., Ibid., page 302.. On the following day the one freed gave thanks to the chapter for the benefit conferred, a rebuke of his crimes was made by a canon delegated for that, afterward the one freed, the Holy Gospels being touched, swore obedience to the dean and chapter of Rouen, defence of the rights of the same Church, detestation of all crimes, and finally his presence in the procession of the feast of the Ascension with a burning torch Ibid., page 324.. And let so much be said of the privilege of the feretory or of St. Romanus, extracted chiefly from the book of the distinguished Floquet, as the notes set down at the foot of the page sufficiently indicate.

* ortu

THE FIRST LIFE OF ST. ROMANUS, ARCHBISHOP OF ROUEN.

By Gerard, monk of St. Medard of Soissons:

From the manuscript of Rouge-Vallée, except for the letter, taken from the Vetera Analecta of Jean Mabillon, p. 429.

Romanus, bishop and confessor at Rouen. (S.)

BHL Number: 7310, 7312

BY GERARD THE MONK.

Letter of the author. Gerard, by the grace of God venerable Father of the monks, to the lord Hugh, archbishop of the city of Rouen ^a, and to the whole college serving God there, prosperous success in the present life, and the prize of indelible felicity. Let the sagacity of your benevolence know concerning the Life of St. Romanus your patron, for which you besought me with most humble prayer, that, since the pact I made with you I have in no way been able to attend to, on account of adversities

namely the distresses which we have suffered on all sides in our parts in the present year. But now I am sending you the very old Life, published in heroic verse, so that it may be known altogether to all that I am sending you no falsehoods of inventions ^b. But that which has been depicted in historical style, keeping it with us on account of its excessive age ^c, I am sending you this one, arranged in the style of that one. The order of the matter too, how I deserved to obtain this, I shall indicate to you in brief speech. At Braine, then, a place of your power ^d, the same Life was lost through negligence, and very many other books. But a certain cleric of the city of Soissons, having bought it from the finder, contributed it to be obtained by our niece, consecrated to God in the monastery of Mary the Mother of God ^e; and she after this, a brief space of time having intervened, imparted the same Life to me by way of gift, the courses of many years having already passed. Moreover with the bended knee of the heart we pray the modesty of your munificence, to repay to us the turn of charity, namely by transmitting to us through our bearer gifts of sacred pledges from your same patron, the most blessed Romanus, as you have pledged, so that we too may be able to celebrate his memory worthily. For the rest I implore with humble prayer that you order the whole brotherhood of that place to pour out prayers to the Lord for me, and that it be done in like manner in the monastery of St. Ouen, and order it in all the places of your power; since I am pressed by so great a weight of weakness that the last hour of departure seems always to me to be present at hand.

May the grace of the Lord keep you without any limit; And bearing the sweet yoke on a gentle neck, May you gladly be able to enter the angelic cohorts.

PROLOGUE.

[1] The times of the worldly kingdom, then, run on through late and perishable things of life in their passing, and the days in slipping make use of the turning courses of the year: but the praise and glory of the Saints are closed by no end at all, indeed they will remain to be recounted perennially, to us indeed for the correction of depraved morals, but to the glory of those who, remaining in the present world, surrounded by the robe of the flesh, always refused with all their strength the whole alluring life, yielding in nothing at all to the ancient enemy, but rather manfully contending, and now lacking an end; whom Christ Jesus has enriched with so great a gift of exaltation, and marked with so bright a name, that "their sound has gone out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world Psalm XVIII, 5.." Though the bones of these lie on the earth, then, their spirits reside in the heavens, gleaming with the brightness of the sun. Whence the Lord brings forth in the Gospel speech: "The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of my Father Matthew XIII, 43.." By whose power human diseases are healed, and sicknesses and distresses driven from the peoples, and moreover by their prayer the prosperous things of life are granted to us, and, what is more salutary, things that are through all things for our souls.

[2] St. Romanus Let the labour of good work, then, brothers, bring forth weariness for no one, since the path of the right road is not to be begun except with a narrow beginning, but in the progress of good conduct the way of God's commandments is run with unspeakable sweetness, and it leads the man, guarded to the end, to the contemplation of God and to eternal salvation; since not he who has begun, but "he who has persevered to the end, he shall be saved Matthew X, 22.." And since by the measure of our littleness the discourse is held on the praise of the Saints, the present day of so great a feast urges us to recall the sacred Romanus among the others, not unequal in merit: whose benefits shine so greatly that his celebrated name flies through the mouths of very many men. For truly this Romanus, sacred to God, is to be praised, whose glory stands so great in the heavens, as hereafter what follows of this Life will narrate; on account of whose glory, says David the psalmist, "blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord, they shall praise you through ages of ages Psalm LXXXXIII, 5.." These things being gradually left, with the pen of the present work turned back, I shall try, Christ being my leader, to turn to the unheard-of deeds of the same holy man.

[3] From an old father and a sterile mother In the times, then, of Lothar, renowned king of the Franks, son of Louis, the most glorious prince, there was a certain man, Benedict by name, in the kingdom of Gaul, which is now called Francia ^f on account of the most glorious men and most robust warriors who, from the parts of Sicambria, under the Lord's leadership, arrived in these provinces, and, converted by St. Remigius, archbishop of the see of Reims ^g, through the word of sacred doctrine, and reborn in the water of baptism, thereafter stood forth as true worshippers of the Catholic faith. This venerable Benedict, sprung from the noble lineage of the aforesaid kings, attained so great a height of goodness that he became lovable to the God of heaven, and venerable to the king and all the courtiers. On this account, moreover, he had never been driven by any goads of pride at all, but rather carrying before all things the virtue of humility, he magnificently fulfilled the commands of the venerable princes, and toward his subjects, as an illustrious father, weighing in all things the power of the Lord, and retaining discretion the mother of virtues, he continually obeyed the will of the Lord.

[4] Foretold by an Angel, he is born, When he was strong in such abundance of virtues, crowned with the grace of the Holy Spirit, while according to custom on a certain night he had given his limbs to rest, soon an Angel was sent by the almighty Lord, saying to him: Benedict, Benedict, the Lord Jesus Christ has sent me to you to announce great joy to you: for behold by his nod your wife Felicitas will bear you an only chosen son, Romanus by name, whom he foreknows to be going to be great, the ornament and splendour of the Church, and a strong column. Him, therefore, the Frankish nation will deservedly venerate, and with humble voice will very often ask that he stand as a pious supporter with Christ, for the sake of their own sins. Gladdened in heart by this vision the father made known the words of the heavenly messenger to his wife: whence they prayed more attentively to the clemency of the Lord, giving their labour to humility, until the promised joy of the Lord came. For once born, Blessed Romanus was nourished with diligent care in the house of his parents. And after a slight interval of time, at his own prompting, for spiritual disciplines beyond the others * he is also handed over to school teachers, to be especially steeped in the liberal disciplines, by whose industry he might serve his studies with constant assiduity, whence he might know how to bring forth things new and old. And the more ardent his grace of learning was, the more gracious stood the access to finding: since on him whom the grace of the Holy Spirit chose for itself, prudence attended: whence Solomon: "All wisdom, he says, is from the Lord God Ecclesiasticus I, 1.."

[5] He is piously brought up; Having become, then, an excellent knower of the divine scriptures, the more his body was strong in holiness, the more he gave his labour to humility. He showed himself affable to all, reckoning himself inferior to no one, thinking of that word of Solomon: "The greater you are, humble yourself in all things Ecclesiasticus III, 20.." "And because God always resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble James IV, 6.." Moreover Romanus of good nature, passing beyond the years of boyhood, exercised the age of adolescence with all solicitude, and daily was vigorous in good works, and there shone forth in his words the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the wisdom of humility in his countenance. And the same Blessed one was bright in mind, firm in interior fortitude, strong in counsel, endowed with prudence, stable in the censure of justice and adorned with the loftiness of religion; tall in stature, comely in face, handsome in hair, chaste in body, devout in mind, affable in address, lovable in aspect, bright in temperance, supported by discretion, assiduous in long-suffering, robust in patience, mild in humility, solicitous in charity. And so the beauty of wisdom adorned him, that according to the Apostle "his speech was seasoned with salt. Luke XIV, 33."

[6] From the king's court So placed, then, on the summit of the virtues, he began strenuously to serve in the court of King Clotaire ^h. For in no way passing over the commands of God, he rendered "to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's Matthew XXII, 21.." For he was venerated with sincere affection by the king and all the nobles, and also by the bishops, and by the various orders of Holy Mother Church, as a modest father, since there shone continually the eloquence of his speech, the greatness of his counsel in all the places of the Lord altogether. Unmindful of power, he spoke this wisdom and the stability of the Holy Church of God. To be imitated by all, made a mirror to all, he never turned aside from the right path, but became an excellent supporter; for he whom no contagions of crimes in the world had bound panted free for the heights of heaven. And although the same father attained the honour of so great an exaltation, yet, driven on that account by no goads of pride, he sincerely obeyed the commands of the court and the edicts of the nobles and great men, thinking of that word of the Apostle: "be subject to every human creature for God's sake, whether to the king, as excelling, or to governors, as sent by him I Peter II, 13.." He was solicitous for the safety of those subject to him, humble and modest in correcting, tempered in anger, driving far from the depths of his heart the evil of discord: and if he heard it, he stopped his ears, so as not to hear of blood, and he shut his eyes, so as not to see evil.

[7] He is called to the see of Rouen Meanwhile it happened that the archbishop of the city of Rouen was lulled by the last sleep of death, and the people of that city, devoted in Christ, was left without a shepherd. Whence, merit demanding and heavenly clemency favouring, all the people, in fellowship of monks and clerics and laymen, acclaimed that Romanus, overflowing with blessing, should be chosen by the lot of the pontificate, and that they should thenceforth be ruled by him in the manner of a bishop. This every sex, this every age, this the will of all acclaimed as a celebrated thing to be done, that a man of so great a merit should become their ruler, who should nourish them with the doctrine of the right way. Animated by such joy by the instinct of divine love, the whole clamour of the universal people reached the ears of the king in this manner, that Blessed Romanus should become their most opulent ruler. Then the king, hearing this, and understanding that St. Romanus was worthy of so great an honour, most gladly gave assent to their affection. He is therefore elected, invested with the honour of the pontificate, all exulting on every side, and he is led to the city of Rouen with harmonious voices of praises ⁱ.

[8] In which, living chastely, At a certain winter time, while that sacred Romanus, that most sacred bishop, was alone at leisure for prayer all night, the enemy of the human race, coming up, stood stripped of clothing before the doors, where within Blessed Romanus was praying, having the appearance of a woman, desiring to tempt the Blessed one by his cunning, saying to him: Holy and chosen one of God, Romanus, open to me the door of your cell, and let into the house a handmaid of God, wearied by a long journey, since I am oppressed by the storm of cold, my clothing stripped. But the Saint of the Lord, altogether spurning such fellowship, caught the voice indeed with his ear, but in his mind wholly refused, thinking it unworthy to join himself within the heart to such a companion of his breast. Then the woman, stirring a most dreadful grief in her breast, began to cry out: Sacred lord of Christ, you will render account to Christ for my soul because of the cold by which my body is being forced to go out; nor will you in this be guiltless or free of crime toward me, who, closing your threshold, do not allow me to enter. And when the Saint stood anxious on every side, at last, moved by pity, he decided that the enemy who was calling should come in. But after the devil, the deceiver, warmed at the fire, spreading the hair of his head down to his feet, when he wished by alluring conversations

to seize the soul of the saint, the almighty Lord, not suffering the temptations of the savage serpent, at once sent a heaven-dweller to him for the sake of aid. At whose coming the wicked enemy was driven off, and St. Romanus of God, not only then, but also very often bearing the darts of temptations, remained proved, always stable with a chaste breast ^k.

[9] He dies holily. Finally when the day of his departure had drawn near, a throng of the faithful being called together, all that he seemed to possess in the world he distributed with generous hand to the needy, to strangers, to widows and to orphans, reserving nothing of all for himself, so that no stain of contagion might be found in him as he was about to pass from the world, thinking of that word of David the psalmist: "He has scattered, he has given to the poor, his justice remains for ages of ages, his horn shall be exalted in glory. Psalm CXI, 9" And so he addressed his most dear sons in such a speech: The Lord Jesus Christ, since from my earliest age he has deigned to have me as his servant according to my strength, for his piety and for the quantity of my labour, may he now return to me the reward of happy glory, and the garland of unfading life: wherefore with fatherly affection I admonish you, most beloved, not to look back, turning aside from the path of the right road, which be far from you; rather increasing more from day to day may you live sincerely; since according to the voice of the Apostle, "each one shall receive his own reward according to his labour. I Corinthians III, 8" But if anyone, which be far, should act otherwise, let him be cherished by your pious example. Let no one do to another what he does not wish done to himself; lest the fierce enemy, who seeks not to take away what is ours, but to strike in us the ardour of charity, find some evil of danger, by which, deceived, you might perish: since I, until now your shepherd, shall be no longer. All weeping, amid the voices of those singing psalms, he gave back his body to the earth, his soul to the stars, where he shines as the sun, crowned with a most white robe. He passed from the world on the tenth before the kalends of November. Then, taking up his body, they buried it with all diligence, where the magnificence of the Lord discloses the benefits of many miracles through his same servant Romanus until the present day, with his aid, to whom be honour and glory and rule through infinite ages of ages. Amen

ANNOTATIONS.

That the access to the see of Rouen was not level for St. Romanus is taught by the more prolix Life to be given below at no. 5. For then the evil plagues, avarice and simony, were raging through the Gauls. We have a most splendid witness of the evil in St. Ouen, in the Life of St. Eligius Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume III, page 229.: Cruelly, he says, in those days the simoniacal heresy was sprouting in the cities and in all the territories of the kingdom of the Franks, and especially from the times of Brunhild, the most unhappy queen, and until the times of King Dagobert this contagion was violating the Catholic faith. Yet the holy men Eligius and Ouen kept solicitous watch over this, and having held common council with other Catholic men, they suggested to the prince and his nobles that this deadly poison should be quickly wiped out from the body of Christ, which is the universal Church. Their pious petition therefore had effect, and they gladly obtained what they had devoutly asked. Then it pleased all, one counsel being received in the Holy Spirit, together with the king's command, that no one should be admitted to the priestly office with a price given, nor those who, like ravening wolves, by giving gifts, thought the gifts of the Holy Spirit were to be purchased. Of what Council it is here a question is uncertain. If of the Third of Chalon, held according to some in the year 644, according to others in 650, then SS. Ouen and Eligius were already bishops, as those who subscribed the said Synod Labbe, Concilia, volume VI, column 390.. Whatever the case, this is placed beyond doubt, that in the time of the election of St. Romanus the simoniacal stain was raging. Wherefore the metrical biographer has the following concerning the election of St. Romanus Martène, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume III, column 1655.:

Despising earthly things, seeking nothing but what was fitting; Distributing the rest, frugal to himself, generous to the needy, An enemy of avarice, which reigns most wickedly everywhere, Which weighs down this world, lest it be able to enter the heavens; A pyre burning unquenchable, grim as the Erinyes, This vice brandishes lethal poison at all, It goads prelates, then beats on subjects, It lays waste the Church, slaughters the common people on every side, It changes morals, grants honours to the unworthy; The avaricious man is suddenly called noble and illustrious, Whom long before one turn had made a Quirite, But the force of raging masters did not drive him out, Subject to vices, oppressed by wicked chains, And although the grim groom has suddenly become a judge, Though he be strong in property, yet he comes forth a slave by crime. Queen money handles human laws, And what is more gravely to be lamented, and much to be grieved, Corrupting the spiritual powers herself, She often brings the crises of death upon the sacrificers: Especially many, whom they call Simoniacs, She invades thoroughly with the flaming heat of desire. The coin ordains these, not the deed of a noble life; The wolf keeps the sheepfold, the wicked one catches at divine things, From the nest of the demon, which black desire has brought forth, He flies out, he seeks the heights. Peter's absence does this; For I believe he would fall, if Cephas were near.

There are omitted in this briefer Life what the other biographers have, the purified or destroyed temples of the idols, the prodigy of the broken and restored chrism vessel, which nevertheless lit the writer's way in the metrical Life, sent by Gerard to Archbishop Hugh, so that readers might know that he had not written falsehoods of inventions. But to what end the transmission of the metrical codex, if Gerard was going to omit the chief works? Whence, as was said above in Annotation b, we believe that Gerard's composition has come down to us mutilated. Further, both prodigies the metrical Life sets forth in these words Martène, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume III, column 1660.:

The holy bishop thus divinely chosen and consecrated, To be venerated with worthy cult, The citizens of Rouen approach, seeking counsel, And suppliantly ask, thus narrating their crises: "Holy father, a most savage enemy presses on us, Bringing very many losses, dwelling at the city's walls, For there is there a fort, firm with the strength of walls, In which a black house of foul harlots lies hidden, Thrust away in various vaults, in blind hiding places. There obscene rivals or parasites, Or those whom the gluttony of impure Epicurus delights, Thirst ever to be stained with the filth of the brothel. In the midst of the fort a chest Note: area? lies open in the manner of a theatre, Where a shrine of Venus, the title of a foul woman, Is falsely frequented, the appearance of a harlot is venerated. Beneath, a yawning cave, stretching thoroughly into the abyss, Narrow in its jaws, like a Stygian deep, Cannot be reached, can be penetrated by no sight, No one has been able to break through the barriers or these entries: So great there is the force of malignant demons. Another irruption of death, O Saint, equal, is on your people. For we suffer the vast crisis of the waters of the Seine; While against custom, passing its former limit, The channel overflows, lays waste the borders far and wide, Overturns houses, destroys little ones even at the breast: It brings destruction on many and the loss of safety. Thence grief, lamentation, bitter sorrow do not cease, In such great misfortunes as the rush of the river heaps on us: By such hardships and dangers we are afflicted; Unless a fount of piety drip on us from heaven, To relieve the wretched; muddy lust will drag the city To punishments like those of Sodom, even of Gomorrah. But your hand, O Saint, which makes firm weak limbs, Which puts bloody monsters to flight, which flashes with divine power, May it spit out this stain, undermine the citadel of Babylon." Having heard such things Romanus, the lordly bishop, Entreats Christ, the asylum of every needy one, To spare the afflicted, as once the Ninevites; To avert death, to crush the enemy of goodness. Then the leader of the faith, morals Note: mox? to the places of ruin: And against the strong his own cohorts to the wars, The psalm-singing flocks according to custom, and the rest of the faithful, With sacred crosses, with precious pledges Thus approaching the fort, and fixing the divine darts, He destroyed the shrine, tore away the barriers of the labyrinth, Crushed the idols, removed the deadly chapels, And purged the place of the filth of the demons: The terrified, bloodless snake lost its force on the spot, At the labarum of Christ, at which it laid down its dominion, As once Joshua, warrior, in the city of Jericho By the offices of praises, with the great clamour of trumpets, Overturned the walls, subdued every fortification: So that faithful leader of our Israel,

Girded by both choirs, melodious with divine praise, Poured the shrines on the ground, whose destruction was on the ground. Then the bishop, powerful in merits, went to the river, Surrounded with his bright ministers and the rest of the people, And armed with the faith of Peter treading on the water, Through the name of the triad, through the power of the Trinity, And through the sign of the cross, which removes every harm, He commands it to stand, nor to go on further, Seeking again the course it held at first from its origin. The flowing nature of the element obeys this faith, And seeks its bosom again, nor goes beyond the banks of the river. Since, this done, the most holy archos Note: prince shines back, Not unequal to Joshua, of whom we have made mention before, Who, devoted to the Lord of heaven with faithful mind, Warring down the enemy, ordered the sun to stand still, Until with inexhaustible arms he should consume the battle lines: An equal power shines, although the elements differ. For if reason had commanded it, or there had been cause, Just as the flowing wave, the sun itself, running through the heights, Would give obedience, nor would the illustrious sign be absent. The city is thus saved, and is stripped of such great evils, And fertile plenty smiles on it with full horn; Death flees, the enemy is gone, the water stands, devotion rejoices. The bishop in the church applauds with worthy proclamations: Christ is adored, by whom the hostile force is put to flight, The Virgin is praised, through whom Cytherea is burned, This lovely honour releases the filth of the brothel.

A little below the biographer sings the prodigy of the chrism vessel in these words Ibid., column 1660.:

Before the sacred day, on which the new people of Christ's worshippers Keeps sweet Easter, on which, rejoicing, it passes to the stars; This athlete of God, although assiduously sparing to himself, Then urged the more the limbs of his worn body, Pressing on in watches, prayers, rivers of tears, And applying cares to the snares of the enemy against souls. And now the day of peace, and of the people's reconciliation Had come, and had filled the sacred hall with crowds, Then the pious bishop gave more abundant weeping, Among those mourning, among those lamenting their crimes, And with pious prayers, asking pardon of their guilt, He absolves the peoples, consecrated the oil for the chrism. But the clergy, incautiously and less provident, all of it Divides among the churches, scarcely one flask remained for them Retaining the liquor for the custom of the bath, And when the venerable third day had flashed forth, Bringing great joys, joining heavenly things to the lowest, And Phoebus, hastening, was now closing the ninth hour The holy bishop went forth to perform the office: Then, while amid the solemnities of the sacred Mass He stood at the fonts, with which to sanctify the bath, He orders the sacred vessel of chrism of the bearer to be brought. But by chance, as the crowd pressed headlong, the minister, While he hastens on foot, so that there be no delay to the bishop, It slips from his hands, the broken vessel is emptied; Almost the greedy sand drank up all the liquor. As the matter became known to the father standing at the fonts, Nothing alarmed by this, but firm in the strength of faith, Gathering the small fragments, stretching his arms to Christ, He stretches his limbs on the ground, pours out devout prayers, Entreating him who wonderfully repairs the world broken at the hinge, By pouring out his own blood, That he may give back to the sorrowing what the rival plague has ruined. Why do I delay in words? at the mute all-powerful one Behold that glass vessel is re-formed, what was loosed is consolidated, Filled with liquor as before.

* supply destinatur

THE SECOND LIFE OF ST. ROMANUS, ARCHBISHOP OF ROUEN.

From the Braine manuscript.

Romanus, bishop and confessor at Rouen. (S.)

BHL Number: 7314

BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.

CHAPTER ONE.

The birth of the Saint; his pious education; the episcopate of Rouen; his labours, miracles, death.

St. Romanus, of a Frankish father, When Clovis, king of the Franks, was ruling within the Gauls, there was from the stock of the Franks, sprung of royal seed, a man Benedict in honour and in name; who served in war under Clovis and his son Lothar ^b, strenuous in war, provident in counsel, comely in life; so that after the king he was called father of the homeland. To him, so great and so lofty, a wife was given, sprung of illustrious birth, Felicitas by name, intent indeed on good works, but troubled by the grief of sterility. Wherefore, greatly ashamed, yet humble before God, they poured out assiduous prayers, and abundant alms, that divine grace might grant them a son; who should support his aged father, broken by arms, take away from his mother the reproach of sterility, possess after them their high patrimonies, and retain the benefices granted by the kings and the households with hereditary honours.

[2] And of a sterile mother, Since, then, their supplication could not be empty, there is sent to them a messenger of unhoped-for joy, namely an Angel from heaven, who at nightfall brought consolation to the man, saying: Do not be afraid, chosen one of God, nor fear to be deluded by a spirit of fantasy: I am that Angel who offered to God your good pursuits and prayers; which indeed, pleasing to the divine sight, will be fulfilled in the next time. For I announce to you a joy you have prayed for, that Felicitas your wife will bear you a son, for whom the prerogative of an illustrious life will acquire the name of Romanus. Remember to keep him immune from the stain of all corruption; because God, while he was not yet begotten, has foreordained him as chosen for the government of Holy Church and the illumination of the homeland. And as soon as, having been weaned, he reaches the years of understanding, you will commit him to Catholic men to be instructed: for it will come about that the Church of Christ will be attacked by perverse heresies, which he in his time will condemn with strong authority.

[3] Foretold by an Angel, he is born: And when the renowned man had disclosed to his wife the whole order of the delightful vision, she, greatly rejoicing, and manifesting what she had concealed within herself, answered: I indeed, when I was spending sleepless the whole night which preceded this one by eight days, imputing to my sins that the Lord had closed my womb, being seized by a light sleep, as happens, so that I seemed neither to be fully awake nor asleep, there stood by me a man, wearing a garment of snowy whiteness, and showing an excessive brightness of countenance, who, laying his hand on me, with a gentle touch felt over my breast and belly, saying: Far from here be rival sterility, so that delightful truth may bear fruit in a new childbirth. Soon after the hand was moved there followed a fiery torch proceeding from my womb, which, running by a long way through the air, and coming as far as the region of Neustria, took up its station, and irradiated that land on every side with light poured around. If there is some foreordained mystery of this matter, my dearest, I feared to disclose it ^c. Here the prudent man, when he had noticed that he had been visited by God, forewarned his wife, who had seen it, to keep silent, so that this mystery might not become known to the common people. The woman acquiesces in the sober counsel of her husband: meanwhile more inclined prayers are made, and a more generous distribution of alms. What more? At last she gave birth to a son, who, as the Angel had admonished, was called Romanus.

[4] Piously and liberally educated, At the fitting time he is commended to Catholic men, to be steeped in divine letters: and these being collected in a brief time, he soon took hold of the paths of a holier life. His fame, everywhere celebrated, penetrated most quickly through the Gauls, and reaching even to the knowledge of the king, moved him to order, by sending an embassy, that he be presented to his sight, and, for the grace conferred on him by God, take part among the first of the palace in the royal counsels. All wondered at his industry, but especially the king, who noticed in him a wisdom spread out to each and every matter.

[5] He is elected bishop of Rouen, Things so proceeding, the archbishop of Rouen ends his life. Wherefore the people of Rouen are drawn apart by various favours concerning the substitution of a bishop, they form parties, they stir up seditions ^d, until, God being propitious, by the opinion of a certain wise man, they complete a three-day fast; which being done, a divine revelation was made through a vision to one of the venerable men, saying that the devotion of the fast and the supplication of the humble had been received. Let them go then as quickly as possible to the king, and passing over all others, ask that he be singularly given to them who bore the name denominated from the citadel of worldly empire: that he, before he was born, was chosen by God, and, like the Forerunner of the Lord, foretold by name to prepare for him a perfect people. This voice having been made, the aforesaid man, calling in silence that man who had given the counsel to the citizens, diligently set forth what had been said to him. He, glad, although uncertain of the person, called the citizens together and disclosed the oracle heard: and they all, with exulting souls, gave thanks to God. And when, winnowing by long discussion the name of the aforesaid empire, they noticed that there was portended by the divine oracle the man of God Romanus, who in the court of the king, having from all the testimony of sanctity and truth, was alone reckoned by that name within the bounds of Gaul.

[6] And is received with joy by the people: Unanimously agreeing on this, they direct envoys with letters to the king, because they knew him to be among the first counsellors of the king. The king gave assent to so harmonious and so holy an election, saying that in a man one should attend to religion rather than age. And Romanus being at last called, the king himself makes known the business: and to him as he resisted he hands the letters also to be read. Reading them through, Romanus, and seeing the divine oracle, terrified, lifting his eyes to heaven, said: Lord Jesus Christ, if this counsel is from you, may your will be done. Without delay the king, taking bishops and a great throng of nobles, leads the chosen servant of God to the named see. It was a sight to see with what great exultation every sex and age went forth to meet the shepherd given them by God. But whose breast was so of iron that he did not weep for joy, when he heard even boys crying out and saying: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Further, these were moved by no other spirit than once the boys of the Hebrews.

[7] The amphitheatre and of Venus For this venerable servant of God too sufficiently proved that he had come in the name of the Lord, when as soon as he had been received by clergy and people and consecrated by the bishops, he at once entirely rooted out the trafficking in sacred Orders and its authors ^e; and he overturned from the foundations the temples and statues of idols, wherever he found them. There was at Rouen on the north an ancient dwelling of Venus, constructed with lofty work in the manner of an amphitheatre, surrounded with shadowy vaults, there was a shrine in the midst and an altar in the shrine, with the title of Venus written above it: behind the shrine there was said to be a Tartarean chasm, very often harmful by stench and flame to the neighbours dwelling around: from there was heard the assembly and murmur of demons, as if coming together in council from distant parts, in which each was compelled to give an account of his works, and according to the greatness of his service each was either honoured more highly, or for his sloth afflicted with blows. Behind a shrine of this kind, under a certain dark place, there was a horrible cave, spacious indeed within, but narrow at its jaws, concealing an inestimable height of depth ^f.

[8] He destroys the shrine; The bishop, then, taking clerics and citizens, proceeded to the place, and exhorts the peoples to destroy it. As the bishop came up, a din of demons began to be heard; of whom one, as it were their prince, spoke thus: What have we to do with you, priest of Christ? Why do you cast us out of our seats? I too shall raise up for you from the ends of the sea and from remote islands strong and fierce men, who will lay waste this land, and subject it to themselves, and will by their terror cause your bones and those of other servants of God to be carried away into foreign regions. As you do to us, we shall do also to you, and to your Christians. To these things the bishop, filled with the Spirit of prophecy, answered: That nation indeed, through which you promise us evils,

and which has not otherwise heard the name of Christ, will hear it in these parts, and after hearing it, Christ having mercy, will receive it, and believing with faithful mind, will take the sacraments of the faith, and will even carry back our bones from the lands to which it hears they have been translated, to their own see with the highest veneration. Now therefore, unclean Spirit, go out with your legion and depart ^g. So speaking, holding the triumphal sign of the cross, he passes through the hostile camp, and as quickly as possible overturned the title of Venus. Wonderful to see, marvellous to say, as the bishop triumphed and made the name of Christ resound, that legion of demons, leaving its seat, fleeing by a long path with terrible howling, betook itself into the air, the bystanders glorifying God, exalting the bishop their defender: who also on the spot, at the bishop's command, help with fervent souls, and overturn from the foundations the dwellings of the demons, except for the circuit of the outer wall.

[9] He restrains the floods of the Seine, Such a company of demons having been eliminated, there arose from the southern side an exceedingly grave distress and unaccustomed in times gone by. For a sudden flooding of the waters came upon the people of Rouen in the first watch of the night. They rise, then, and, scarcely taking their little ones, and the things that the hand found in going out, climb the neighbouring hills; the rest, as the deluge prevailed, perished ^h. The holy bishop was then absent, occupied with the king on ecclesiastical business: but a messenger being sent by the citizens, the solicitous shepherd, leaving many things aside, quickly returned. Taking in hand the Lord's cross, he went out against the wandering waters. Prayer being poured out to the Lord, the waters are poured out likewise and flee back, and, the holy bishop pursuing them, they leave the fields which they had overrun, and pour themselves back into their channel. The inhabitants, seeing this, with hands raised to heaven, give thanks to God and bless their bishop abundantly: but fearing to be overtaken by a revived deluge, they arrange to dwell in other seats. The excellent bishop calls them back, and, breathed on by the Holy Spirit, addresses them thus: Do not, sons, do not be so troubled: for these swelling waters will not come upon you any more: but know that what they foretell to you is that an army of a hostile nation will come upon you, brought by pirate hands. This nation, through excessive ferocity, will occupy this region, and subject it to its dominion: yet I have obtained from the Lord for you, that these things shall not come about in your times. That nation indeed will not prevail, but, God being propitious, soon, having received the faith, it will keep the people subject to it in much peace. On hearing these things the citizens of Rouen believe the bishop, and go without delay to their houses, rescued from the waters.

[10] He goes round the diocese; Moreover, while he was visiting the churches of his diocese according to episcopal custom ⁱ, he came to a temple, constructed with lofty work, full of fanatical error. While he gazes on it from afar, he sees on the high pinnacles of the temple unclean spirits looking out, and disposed in truculent manner to resist him. Here the bishop asks his men whether they too saw those most foul demons: and when they said that they beheld nothing of the kind, those who were said to be the guardians of that shrine are summoned in turn to be present with the bishop. Questioned on the religion of that shrine, trembling, they answered nothing, but rather were confounded and turned pale. Soon from the top of the summit of the shrine an obscene voice burst out, saying: What are you doing here, Romanus, have you come to cast us out, as you cast out our companions from the see of Rouen? The bishop, signing himself, strikes the door, which soon, its bars broken, with a great noise, laid open free access to the Christians entering. As the bishop entered, all the idols fall down, and at once the mourning of the haruspices and the howling of the demons are heard together: and on the other hand a joyful clamour of the faithful is raised: the soldiers rush in, they seize in rivalry the gold and silver with which the idols were covered. The bishop calls them back with severe rebuke, lest by touching those profane things they should be contaminated, and hastens to go out with all. On going out, he raises his eyes with his hand to heaven, and by the sole impulse of prayer levels that whole building very quickly in a sort of chasm of the earth. From this side and that the peoples run together, roused by the fame of so great a miracle, and in their places they disclose statues of Apollo and Mercury shamelessly venerated by the priests: the bishop goes, supported by the power of Christ alone; and as he makes the sign, the temple of the demons and their statues fall headlong from the foundations, and, turned to dust, they vanish: and in that place the priest of Christ had a church founded from his own understanding *.

[11] He wonderfully repairs a broken chrism vessel: The time of the sacrosanct fast which precedes Holy Easter had come, and in it the bishop was pressing on in fasts and prayers, showing due solace to the poor and penitent. When Lent had been completed, on the day of Holy Saturday, on which the general baptism is accustomed to be consecrated, while the bishop was intent on blessing the baptismal waters, holy baptism * is required, and is not found. When someone with headlong course had gone to the place where the little vessel of chrism was kept; seizing the little vessel, while he goes headlong and astonished, falling on the slippery pavement, he shatters the vessel he was carrying and scatters the poured-out chrism. When they saw this, all groan together, are troubled, and more than the others the holy bishop. Who, however, at last recovering his breath, goes forward, and before the chrism, variously poured out, is prostrated with his whole body, and penetrates heaven with prayers. He perceives, therefore, that his prayers have been received by God, and rising he commands the fragments of glass to be gathered up again, and when, received in his hand, he had at once reformed them solid, he applied the open mouth of the reformed little vessel to the pavement. A wonderful thing! and of a miracle until now to be published as unexperienced: it was a sight to see the rivulets of the poured-out chrism and each of the drops gathered into one, and, running back, climbing into the mouth of the little vessel. But I cannot fully utter what praises, what thanksgivings were returned to God by those who, being present, were beholding such wonderful marvels before their eyes. Many other things too I pass over, while I hasten to greater ones.

[12] By a heavenly vision he is warned of his approaching death; On a certain day of the Lord's Ascension the aforesaid shepherd was celebrating solemn Mass: and while in the sacred Canon he was confecting in mind and mouth together the Sacraments of the blood and body, he was wholly raised from the earth in body, and lifted into the air. It was not granted to all who were present to see this. Only three brothers of holy conduct, grace coming upon them, were able to behold it more fully. And while he was raising the sacred chalice a little higher from the table a fiery flame appeared over his head, and from the midst of the fire a right hand blessing him: and when the right hand of the Lord withdrew itself upward within the fiery globe. Thence a voice proceeding reached the ears of the bishop, saying: Be constant, O servant of God, persevere, as you have begun; for in the next time I shall come to you, and I shall place you among the elect in the kingdom of my Father: where from the right hand, which you have seen, you will receive the palm of perennial glory and the robe of eternal joy. But in this too I receive your prayers, that whatever you ask concerning whomever and for whomever, you will always obtain: and the sacred things that you handle in the present office, I shall complete for you in eternal life. Having beheld these things and heard them thus, he indicated to his sons and brothers that the day of his calling was at hand, and thereafter, avoiding the crowds of peoples, he betook himself more closely to holy contemplation and assiduous prayers in a more remote little cell.

[13] A demon, tempting him under the form of a woman, Against this the ancient enemy, rising up, taking the form of a woman, attacks as tempter the solitary bishop. For when at that time a rather harsh winter was binding the earth with stiffening cold, under the darkness of night the dark enemy approaches, crying out that she was a wretched and desolate woman, despoiled by robbers. And when, knocking at the door of the little cell, and lamenting that she was perishing from excessive cold, she sighed, and begged that mercy be done to her for Christ's sake, at length by these plaintive weepings the bishop is moved to mercy, so that so wretched a person should be mercifully admitted. But although, mindful of his purpose, he stood uncertain and doubtful, fearing on the one hand lest on account of his purpose due mercy be denied, on the other lest on account of mercy he should deviate from his holy purpose: yet as the woman miserably lamented, piety conquered purpose: and under the name of piety impiety enters. The enemy, then, let in as a woman, with hair adorned, comely of face, opens the breast, and presents beautiful limbs: soon too coming nearer, she asks to be warmed in the bed. Pressed by these things, the bishop recognizes the enemy, and recognizing himself to be a soldier of Christ, he turned with his whole soul to God. And behold an Angel of the Lord, coming upon the scene, fortifies with the sign of the cross the doors, ceilings and roofs of the whole cell, and in a wonderful manner cuts down the enemy, thus caught, presses him, routs him, and, exit being denied, compels him to go off through the unclean sewers ^k.

[14] He puts to flight by prayer; Then the man of God, secure, began vehemently to condemn in himself the fault of leniency, that, relaxing the purpose of his ancient gravity, deceived on whatever occasion, he had received the female sex into his hospice. Then indeed you would have seen him beating his innocent breast with his fists, crying out that he was wretched, calling down dire curses, that he bore the pastoral government unworthily, who could have been sufficiently taught, even from the deception of the first parent, how much the blandishments of feminine persuasion are to be avoided in such a meeting. Him accusing himself in such heat the same Angel who had thrust out the malignant enemy consoled, so that he should not torture himself with such great pain, saying: Deservedly indeed, chosen one of the Most High, are you pricked with compunction, for having received under the shadow of your roof any false appearance of the corruptible sex: but piety and compassion have conquered you. Restore, then, the manly strength of your soul, take up again against the snares of the ancient tempter the constancy of prudence and sobriety; understanding this as truth, that placed next to a serpent you will not long be unharmed. And being solicitous concerning your calling, which is close at hand, do not delay, as a most vigilant shepherd, to instruct the household subject to you, and to fortify it in advance against the tricks of this deceiving enemy. Refreshed by these things and more certain of his calling, he ordered the brothers of the monastery to be called together to him: to whom he made known first his impending death, then the snares he had suffered from the devil, so that they should never allow themselves to be corrupted by the fellowship of a familiar plague.

[15] At last having said farewell to his clerics Now the time was at hand when the true Israel, to be freed from the hardships of Egypt, was to receive the rewards of the contest accomplished. Wherefore, anticipating in mind the slipping course of the days, he solicitously awaited the day of his departure, which he had learned through the Angel. There takes place, then, at his command, a generous distribution of movable goods to the poor, and through the churches of God, under a testament, a large disposal of estates. Finally on a certain Sunday night, while he wished to refresh with a slight sleep his weak limbs, wearied by nightly vigils, he felt himself pressed within his bowels by certain stings of a reigning disease: and for this reason that day and the following week, in expectation of his departure, he continued with psalms and prayers until the ninth hour of the following day. At which hour, feeling the pain beating on his vitals with frequent blows, the brothers being called together, he orders his body to be anointed with holy oil. Then he began to instruct them with few indeed, but most salutary, admonitions, saying: There is one thing, my brothers and most dear sons, which I commend to you to be observed with wakeful mind, that he may recognize peace and unanimity remaining among you, who when about to pass from this world to the Father said to his chosen ones: "Peace I leave you, my peace

I give to you." John XIV, 27 Yet I admonish you to keep it with this discretion, that you carefully take heed with whom you ought to establish it: because if the wickedness of the perverse is joined in peace, assuredly strength is increased for their evil acts: for the more they agree among themselves in malice, the more robustly they dash themselves against the afflictions of the good. Whence David: "Have I not hated those who hate you, O Lord, and pined away over your enemies?" Psalm CXXXVII, 21.

[16] He dies holily. Behold, brothers, I am now called by the Lord, I ought not to hold you longer with a long discourse; you yourselves know how I have conducted myself with you from the beginning of my ordination; not gold, not silver, not at all what was yours, but you yourselves I have sought: I have not exercised tyrannical domination over you, but, as you yourselves are my witnesses, I have cherished you with fatherly affection. If I have ruled you, not as was fitting; yet I have ruled as I knew and could. I received you from Christ to rule, I give you back to him to be ruled, to him, not to make it long, I commit you, who washed you with saving baptism and redeemed you with his own blood, Jesus Christ, who lives with the Father and the Holy Spirit through ages of ages. So speaking he gathered himself on his bed, which, covered with ashes and hair-cloth, he had been accustomed to have for festive softness, and gave back his holy soul to heaven. At whose passing there came to meet him a glorious number of Saints, with whom, whole from every stain, he follows the lamb, the author of virginal chastity, our Lord Jesus Christ. Of whose funeral rites, since I am not able to speak sufficiently, I have thought one should be silent: because how great an order of those singing psalms, how great a crowd of those lamenting came to it, can indeed be estimated, but cannot be numbered. He passed on Sunday night, on the tenth day before the kalends of November ^l, and was buried at the first from the city in what was once his oratory, in which place in honour of Blessed Gildard, once of the same see, a church is known to have been founded: where divine benefits more abundantly * to the praise of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom be honour and glory through ages of ages.

ANNOTATIONS.

* censu?

* Chrisma?

* supply: lapide

* supply: episcopi

* supply: praestantur

CHAPTER II.

A difficulty occurring in the Life of St. Romanus is solved by a certain elder: a vision glorifying the Saint; who, being invoked, frees certain clerics of his Church from shipwreck.

Archbishop Robert raises certain objections If one likes to weigh the causes of things, as from reflected light light is poured back; so in a manner signs arise from miracles. As an example of this matter we think a certain event suffices, terrible to sight and hearing, but provable by faith and reason. For the memorable day of the deposition of Blessed Romanus was at hand, which the brothers of the monastery were anticipating with solemn offices. To which the venerable bishop Robert ^a had also come, to keep the watch himself. They had by chance reached the place where the published book of the life of the aforesaid father records (as we have heard in the former vision) that as he stood at the Lord's sacraments, from the highest summit the right hand of the Lord appeared ^b: at this place the aforesaid bishop, hesitating for some time, spoke thus to a certain elder, whom he had had as master in the liberal disciplines: Although it is wrong to doubt of the merits of this our venerable father, dear master, yet this place, I confess, compels my mind to waver; whether it is credible for a bodily man, however holy, to behold the right hand of God with bodily sight. At this that man, sighing deeply, shuddered at the word that had slipped from the bishop's mouth, and checked him with a moderate rebuke, saying: Why, dearest Lord, could you think such a thing? Why, troubled by an unusual example, have you fallen into the pit of hesitation? You could have been taught at least by the example of the earlier fathers, that the revealed glory of the Lord has often appeared. Whom leaning on a ladder the patriarch Jacob saw, when he beheld the Angels ascending and descending.

[18] Against things narrated of St. Romanus, to whom his master answers: But Isaiah too testifies that he saw the Lord, not yet incarnate, sitting on a lofty throne: and Micah saw the Lord sitting, and all the host of heaven standing by him. And Blessed Stephen declared that he saw the Son of man standing. Far then, far from you, lord, be a doubt of this kind. To this the bishop, patiently bearing the word of rebuke, said: I admit, good master, that it is so, nor is there anything for which I should go against open reason: forgive me, then, venerable master. Who answering said: I forgive you, my lord, and may God forgive you, and may the blessed Confessor not take as an injury to himself the word brought forth; lest you too should appear in the lot of those who said that the fatherly voice sent forth over Christ was thunder. He had not yet completed his words, and behold a sudden flashing of the air and a crash thundered, at which all of us who were keeping watch for Lauds acknowledged that the destruction of the world had come upon us from the dissolution of the elements; although no signs of a storm, but everything equally serene, had appeared a little before ^c. An hour had already passed, and behold that flashing of awesome light, which had occupied the whole spaces of the church from the top to the bottom, gathered itself into one ray, and poured itself by a straight way into the feretory in which the sacred bones rest, with wonderful splendour, as we looked on, so that no signs of this light remained outside; as if the elements openly testified, that human

hearts refused to believe. Indeed, resuming our course, not without fear we carried Lauds through to the end. When these were completed, who could suffice to enumerate how many questions about the event, and how discordant the opinions that were advanced? At last the venerable bishop disclosed to the brothers the question held between himself and his master at that very hour at which the light flashed forth with the thunder. Taking up which word a man of indeed higher understanding and ancient authority fitted to it by competent reasoning the affirmation of the aforesaid revelation, saying: Since to the reproach of the Jews insensible rocks grieved at the death of Christ, it seems worthy that against our unbelief the elements of the world should come forward in testimony of this our holy father.

[19] The vision of a certain wonderful man, But neither do I think this should be kept silent, which I learned from the report of a certain elder, who by dignity and office moderately exercised the charge of the sacred building ^d. For since it was his familiar custom to come ahead of the others to the night praises, the signals not having yet been rung, I began curiously to ask him whether anything worthy of memory had ever happened to him to see in the church. When he had shrunk from confessing this with much dissembling, at last, overcome by my importunity, he related this one thing to me, begging that it be covered by me too with silence. What I am relating to you, he says, I profess to have seen, not with sleep deluding me, but with conspicuous sight. On a certain Sunday night, shaken out of sleep, while I was hastening to the church according to custom , a certain man stood by me, deterring me from disturbing the elders : and when I could not describe his countenance, nor had any idea of what brothers he was speaking; a wonderful thing! sleep suddenly pressing me down, rapt in ecstasy , I see myself going forward to the church as if on a solemn day. And when, having entered it, I directed my eyes toward the East (shall I speak, or keep silent?) I saw a sight wonderful, but delightful, and I truly saw: around the altar, in the manner of a crown, priestly men, wrapped in pontifical vestments, sitting. As these sat reverently around, one, it happened, who stood in the middle, showed to the others as it were the ministry of official care: who, looking round from behind , when he saw me, with a countenance a little severe, as if rebuking, terrified me : why I had presumed to enter unbidden . Immediately trembling and stupefied, I fell to the ground, unable to bear the brilliance of his eyes and the angelic appearance of his countenance.

[20] In which the holy bishops of the Church of Rouen Then that man, taking pity, exhorts me not to fear. To whom I, taking confidence , speak thus: This assembly, my Lord, I entered not through curiosity or temerity , but wholly ignorant of the matter , not reckoning on any offence . But since either unknowing or insolent I have come here, let my Lord not allow me to be ignorant , if it is lawful to ask, who are these elders, or for what have they come here assembled? Who said : These are the apostolic rulers, who once ruled the present church , through whom both this kingdom flourished in much peace, and the subject people was green in long safety, who still have no small care of the place and the public welfare. And when I asked that the names of each be set forth to me: It should have been enough for you, he says, to have gone off unpunished from the place in which, having entered, you had given offence, not also to demand the names of these, which already shine in the book of life, written in golden titles . But since I see you so anxious about this: that one whom you see at the right of the altar, white with venerable hoary hair, this is the lord Mello ^e, who from the honeyed sweetness of charity obtained a name suitable to himself. That other, whom you see crowned with bloody roses, a crown shining between them, is Blessed Nigasius ^f, who, one of us, under the time of persecution, fell cut down by the material sword. And that one, gleaming with countenance and eyes of angelic dignity, is our lord Ouen, who in his time against the Arian and Priscillianist perfidy , and the other adversaries of the name of Christ, carried on no small wars as an unwearied soldier, whom both by the spiritual sword of divine dogma and by the power of signs he rendered mute and speechless: happy still is this city of Rouen, supported by the neighbouring protection of so great a patron ^g. He who reclines in the next seat is the venerable Ansbert ^h, who shone forth both outstanding in doctrine and flashing in miracles.

[21] Among whom St. Romanus is chief, Each of the sitters of the starry crown having been so enumerated, since I had not yet heard mention of Blessed Romanus, I thought that this very one who was speaking to me truly was Blessed Romanus ; the more certainly, as I had seen him standing among the others as the father of the household, as if for the ordering of mystical things. Questioning him, then, with familiar daring, I say: Are you, venerable father, that advocate of ours Romanus, who alone preferred to keep this place for us? But he says: Do not say that I am he: for when you see him, you will have no need of another's indication: manifest signs will be enough for you, a countenance brighter than the sun, more sparkling than the stars, eyes glowing with starry light and dripping gems, a neck of milk, rosy cheeks, a brow whiter than snow, so that nothing of the perfect resurrection seems to be lacking. To him I said: Why, my lord, am I to say that he alone is absent, who should have been more present? Or is he to be believed to have deserted this place ? Then the venerable hero: Not as you fear, he says, has the lord Romanus deserted this place; but he presides more familiarly than the others, keeps and guards it. Indeed you will see that he is not far away, and he is plainly next to the sacristy and with him three men of the pontifical order, who attend him to adorn himself with sacred vestments; and also persons not ignoble of the levitical dignity and the following order, who will presently lead him at the right hand before the present altar to carry out the Lord's sacred rites: because we shall by no means go away from here today, until, having taken his blessing, we ask of him a most welcome farewell , we who also await his edict, by which * we ought soon to hasten to a divine council of this kind.

[22] Appear in solemn To him I too said: Who then shall we say you are, father, who have deigned so to address me? Victricius, he says, I am called, surnamed the most firm, whom the brothers preferred to be called by such a name for this reason, because in judicial causes neither person, fear nor love ever could turn me from the truth. Whence both the apostolic see and other councils through the subject world were accustomed to ask of this see of our humility answers in doubtful causes: nor did they acknowledge as firm or complete whatever lacked the title of our sanction [i]. While that excellent father was setting these things forth, behold from the inner sacristy a wonderful fragrance of odour poured itself so greatly into our nostrils, that it surpassed all spices in the sweetness of its odour. There soon follows an ordered line, with crosses, candles, thuribles, and books of the Gospel: Blessed Romanus himself at the end of the column, two pontifical men attending on the right and left, advanced with incomparable countenance and bearing, (of whose beautiful honour neither the mind avails to meditate, nor the tongue to utter, since) like that ruler of the Israelite people, Moses, coming down from the mountain , on whose face the people, waiting below, could not gaze on account of the glory of his countenance, which he had taken on from the fellowship of divine address.

[23] Rite celebrating: Soon, as he came up, the whole choir of those sitting around rises with such a voice: This man appeared most mild among his people, which, chanting it with the verse to the end, they lead him up to the altar itself. Then , delaying a little in prayer, he raises himself , and standing he imparted the kiss of peace to the brothers on right and left; and so he goes forward to the altar [k], the others beginning the Mass in these words: May your Saints, O Lord, bless you. When they had come to the place of the Offertory, each in order offered bread and wine. Finally , the hour of the blessing being at hand , the lord Victricius himself, with raised voice, orders the others to bow for the blessing; then to communicate of the heavenly sacraments. The offices being thus completed, I curiously watched where this crowd of Saints would betake itself. For when "Ite missa est" had been cried out, the lord Romanus himself prayed a little, the others keeping reverent silence. And when he moved from the altar, behold all, surrounding him in the midst, lead him into the aforesaid sacristy. Waiting long outside, while I see no one go out or in, with suspended foot, going forward trembling to the sacristy, I look within , and, the cell empty, I find that all have gone. Terrified by this event, because I could perceive no sign except the fragrance of odours; of which I doubt what I ought to conjecture, except that it is most certainly established that they are with God , among those who, clothed in white robes, follow the Lamb, wherever he goes. Yet they wished this very celebration of the sacred office to become known to mortals; so that we might understand that they govern with their present patronage the place which they ruled temporally , unless they be kept off by our offences.

[24] Three clerics of Rouen, St. Romanus being invoked, Two brothers of the levitical order from the city of Rouen, and a third, a venerable presbyter of an adjacent colony, had agreed together to visit the Lord's sepulchre at Jerusalem. Having undertaken the pilgrimage, then, and having crossed the Alps, on arriving at Rome they think it unworthy to pass by the sacred thresholds of the Apostles ungreeted. Here from nearly remote parts a numerous crowd of men had poured in, who themselves too, having sought out a pilgrimage, were going to this same region. Inquiries being made on either side as to their causes, soon, joined in alliance with one another, they proceed from the City. Then, seeking with eager souls the shores of the Adriatic sea, they find by chance very many cargo ships; of which one, which seemed more ready, the three brothers of whom we have spoken board. With the winds then answering to their wishes, all the ships together held the high seas on a prosperous course; and they had already passed nearly the middle of the open sea, when this one, which was carrying the said brothers, met with a miserable mishap. For while on every side the rest of the sea shone with tranquil serenity, a gathered outpouring of storms from the whole sky lay more vehemently on this one hull, it was pitiable to see the vessel, caught in the bosom of a violent whirlwind, in no way able to be freed, with the sailors struggling: and so it is worn out for so long by the encircling tossing, until, received by the depth of the abyss, it settled on the lowest sands, not however without the manifest protection of God.

[25] Are freed from shipwreck. The sailors meanwhile, with faint murmur, accused themselves of having taken on sacrilegious men, whom neither the land could sustain nor the sea carry. The brothers, hearing these things, but dismayed by the fear of impending death, giving no answers to the slandering sailors, at last one of those brothers, breaking out in speech, began to cry out: Saint Romanus, Saint Romanus; whom he indeed venerated daily with special memory, him he invoked as a familiar patron. He saw a man, flashing with inestimable light, addressing the Lord of majesty in such prayers: Sovereign Lord, the savage tempest of the sea shuts off these your servants, seeking the place of your passion.

Let this repulse, good king, be made bearable for them by escape from the present evils, lest the ancient enemy, if he is contriving anything in them, should ascribe this to the wickedness of his art. May the wave, which flows by your authorship, become for them a way of salvation to the grace of adoption; may it become, under your guidance, for them a harbour of salvation for the keeping of life. Without delay St. Romanus sat down in the rear part of the hull: and, the sea being calmed, he wrenched the ship from the sands. Then with the staff by which he had steered the ship of the Church in the worldly age, he pushed the vessel itself, so that, flying over within an hour the whole space that the companion fleets had made in a whole day with free course, he brought the ship to the longed-for shore much in advance of them. And not long after, the others, gaining the harbour and lamenting their lost companions, come upon on the shore those whom they thought had perished in the savage shipwreck. Yet they do not presume to believe what they see, but think it a dream, until, the order of their experience being set forth, they make certain those they had received in doubt. There is common joy over the safety of each other: all things necessary for refreshment being prepared, he alone to whom the aforesaid revelation had appeared, abstaining from eating meat, returned many thanksgivings to God, who had freed him ^l. The rest is lacking.

ANNOTATIONS.

* P. ex more procedere

* P. ne deberem seniores inquietare

* P. in extasim rapior

* P. orientalem plagam

* P. adds sane

* P. vir autem sanctus

* P. specie me

* P. lacks me

* P. adds sed quid imprudens ego dicerem?

* P. fulgur oculorum

* P. audacia

* P. non curiositas, non sane temeritas me introire persuasit

* P. adds de introitu

* P. contrahare non metuebam

* P. vetit

* P. omits Qui ait

* P. in vita sua rexerant

* P. A quo cum

* P. nedum istorum nomina … refulgent, tibi jubeas exponi

* P. domnus

* P. Nicasius

* P. haeresim.

* P. fore

* P. fatear

* P. In quo et ceteri

* P. reportemus

* P. quo

* P. appellare

* P. praevaluerunt

* P. infuderat

* textibus

* P. ipse in extremo … pontificalibus, ipse, in quam B. pontifex Romanus

* P. adds incedebat

* P. Verum

* P. erigeret

* P. Jam

* P. instabat

* P. adds postmodum

* P. progredior

* P. et diligentius introspicians

* P. stupor altus conterruit, quod exitum aut vestigium, sed neque signum aliquod deprehendere potui, praeter quod ex residua odoris fragrantia satiari non poteram.

* P. adds praesentes

* P. certissima fide constet

* P. adds hunc conventum concilii

* P. rexerant.