Ingaud

ON ST. INGAUD, CONFESSOR, AT MONTREUIL IN THE DIOCESE OF ARRAS,

SEVENTH CENTURY.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Ingaud, confessor at Montreuil in the diocese of Arras. (S.)

BHL Number: 7471

BY R. D. B.

§ Sole. St. Ingaud, disciple of St. Salvius. In what age he lived. His relics and cult.

Montreuil-sur-Mer Among the thirty-three towns and villages in the Gauls which bear the name Monasteriolum (Montreuil) [Dictionnaire universel, géographique, statistique, etc., vol. III, p. 536 ff., Paris, 1804.], this one is singularly to be remembered, that in the most remote times it was called Bragum [Wastelain, Description de la Gaule-Belgique, sect. VII, art. II, p. 330; edition of 1788.], and is now, from the nearness of the sea, called Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that it was formerly in the diocese of Amiens, but is today in the diocese of Arras, and so is situated in the department of the Pas-de-Calais *. For on the present day there is celebrated in that place the festival of St. Salvius, bishop of Amiens, and of his disciple St. Ingaud, who is otherwise called Ingoaldus, Ingaldus, or also in French Angaud, Aingauld, Aingault, Engaud, Ingaude Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d'Amiens, vol. III, p. 78.. That St. Ingaud is said to have received his name as though "in gaudium," into joy, on account of the healing of his eyes and ears, arose from this: that at the time when his memory was committed to writing, the Franks had long since been ignorant of the origin of their own names, as in the case of St. Maglorius, whose name they interpreted as "magnum gloria" Acta SS., vol. X of October, pp. 782 and 786.. The origin of names of this kind goes back, as it were, to the beginnings of the Germanic languages, which have this in common, that most names are made up of two words each having a definite sense. Whether these are compounds, as Theophilus in Greek, or juxtapositions, as Giansiuseppe in Italian, this is not the place to inquire. This one thing we wish to have noticed: that the first root of the name Ingoaldus is Ing, that is, offspring, and the second root is Ald, as is also found in Clodoald, Arnoald, Chagnoald, and by which "old" or "ancient" seems to be signified [Wiarda, Ueber deutsche Vornamen und Geschlechtsnamen, part I, §22, p. 54.], unless you prefer to derive this word from Wald, in Latin "ruling" or "commanding" Pott, Die Personennamen, p. 229 ff., second edition.. I judge it superfluous to set out the fortunes of Montreuil-sur-Mer, lest after Malbrancq De Morinis, vol. II, book VI., Roger [Biblioth. Histor. de la Picardie et de l'Artois, p. 199; Archives de la Picardie et de l'Artois, vol. II, p. 265 ff.], Harbaville Mémorial histor. du Pas-de-Calais, vol. II, p. 154. and Florentin Lefils Histoire de Montreuil-sur-mer. we should seem to be doing work already done.

[2] St. Ingaud, disciple of St. Salvius, Little is known of St. Ingaud, and had not the Acts of St. Salvius, first abbot and afterwards bishop of Amiens, been preserved for us, his memory would probably have been blotted out. For there we read, very opportunely: "At that time, then, while St. Salvius was travelling through his diocese for the purpose of visitation, coming to the pagus of Vimeu , he stayed at a villa which Theuderic, the most renowned king, had given, Augusta by name; and there a certain little boy was brought into his presence, who was deaf and lacked the faculty of speech. His mouth, his forehead and his whole face he blessed with the touch of oil, and thereupon the boy received without delay the natural use of speech. Him he at length cleansed in the laver of baptism and happily named Ingaudius; he imbued his mind with the divine Spirit, and made him a true catholic in faith" Acta SS., vol. I of January, p. 706.. Apart from these words of a writer of about the tenth century, there is deep silence about St. Ingaud in the ancient historical documents. That he first saw the day at Augusta (which was a villa of the pagus of Vimeu, of the city and diocese of Amiens [Guérard, Essai sur le système des divisions territoriales de la Gaule, pp. 149, 78 f.], situated between the Ocean and the rivers Somme and Authie *), the biographer of St. Salvius indicates clearly enough. But what place is it that was once called Augusta? Mabillon [Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti, vol. II, Life of St. Walaricus, p. 84. Compare Acta SS., vol. I of April, p. 23.], Hadrien de Valois Notitia Galliarum, p. 56. and Wastelain Descript. de la Gaule-Belg., part I, p. 332. say not obscurely that it is a village by the Ocean named Auft or Aust, between the mouths of the rivers Authie and Somme, in the department of the Somme; and this opinion is not easily to be rejected. On the other hand, the Benedictine monk Grenier [Mémoires de la Société Royale d'Emulation d'Abbeville, years 1838, 1839, 1840, p. 299.] thinks it is the village of Oust-Marais or Aouste, neighbouring the village of Aust. Others judge that Augusta stood in Normandy, where the town of Eu now is [Cochet, La Seine-Inférieure histor. et archéol., pp. 28, 318 f.; Bulletin de la Commission de la Seine-Inférieure, 1870 to 1872, p. 426 ff.]; but these views do not seem admissible, since Eu and Aouste were not in the pagus of Vimeu, but in the pagus of Caux or of Talou, of the city and diocese of Rouen [Wastelain, Description de la Gaule-Belgique, Sect. VII, art. III, p. 433. Guérard, pp. 145, 78 f.]. From this discussion we learn that the birthplace itself of St. Ingaud, although it has not been fully established, was probably Aust.

[3] and a monk of Montreuil. Nor do we know for certain whether St. Ingaud was ever a priest. For the ancient historical documents hint at nothing of the kind. But tradition holds that after his healing he clung to St. Salvius as his constant companion De Morinis, vol. I, book III, ch. V, p. 288.. Hence we conjecture that the holy man was at least a cleric, and therefore a monk, as all clerics and priests in Gaul in that age are said to have been, as Ruinart learnedly shows in the Dissertation prefixed to the Works of St. Gregory of Tours. I suspect that before he was taken by St. Salvius as his companion he first led the monastic life at Montreuil; for that St. Salvius himself, before his episcopate, was enrolled among the monks of that place was read by Malbrancq in ancient manuscript codices of Montreuil, and by Ménard Martyrol. Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, Observ., book II, p. 451. on the silver plates with which, in his time, the reliquary of the holy bishop was covered. Moreover, his bones have rested there from very remote times. Nor is it an obstacle that we read that Helgod, count of Boulogne, built the monastery of Montreuil in the ninth century, because this seems to be understood of its enlargement. Then too it appears all the more probable that St. Ingaud, the disciple, followed in the footsteps of his master in that very place, because there also his relics have been honoured from time out of mind.

[4] He seems to have lived in the seventh century. Likewise it is not altogether certain at what time he dwelt among men; but since he was baptized as a boy by the holy bishop of Amiens Salvius, who probably lived at the beginning of the seventh century, it follows that St. Ingaud himself is in the same way to be reckoned among the blessed of that age. And this is what Stilting judges concerning the age of St. Salvius in the Posthumous Glory of St. Firminus the confessor, whose body, no less than the body of the other St. Firminus, the martyr, also bishop of Amiens, was translated by St. Salvius. There Stilting contends against Le Cointe Annales Eccles. Francorum, vol. IV, at the year 638, p. 146 f. that the opinion by which St. Salvius is believed to have presided over the church of Amiens about the beginning of the seventh century is far more probable than the opposite one, namely that he was bishop at the end of the same century. "I have taken my reasons," says Stilting [Acta SS., vol. VII of September, p. 36 ff. Compare Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d'Amiens, vol. III, p. 476 f.], "not from the Life of St. Salvius alone, whose author, since he wrote at least two or three centuries after St. Salvius, could easily have erred in some chronological notes, but also from the very catalogues of the bishops of Amiens, in which no one is found towards the end of the sixth century unless St. Honoratus is placed then, whom all the older documents make the predecessor of St. Salvius, and indicate to have sat at that time. In the same catalogues, again, after St. Honoratus a place is found for Salvius. On the other hand, the same catalogues are so full towards the end of the seventh century that for the said bishops, who seem to have held the see for a considerable time, a place can by no means be found." But although Stilting's opinion seems to me much the sounder, I confess nevertheless that I am not a little troubled that St. Salvius is said to have been acceptable to King Theuderic. For if this were true, Stilting's reasoning would collapse; for that king could scarcely have been any other than Theuderic, king of Neustria at the end of the seventh century, at which time Amiens was part of Neustria. But perhaps the biographer speaks of Theuderic, son of Childebert, who at the beginning of the seventh century obtained the kingdom of Burgundy, succeeding his father, the son of Brunhild. Accordingly there does not seem to be any reason why we should strike St. Ingaud from the mortals of the seventh century.

[5] His relics from one reliquary into another Clearer documents survive concerning the relics of St. Ingaud, which Henri de Feydeau, bishop of Amiens, gathered in a letter issued when, in the year 1702, he translated the sacred remains of SS. Salvius and Ingaud, whose fortunes had long been the same, from a wooden into a silver reliquary. Receive, reader, this diploma:

Henri Feydeau de Brou, by divine mercy

Bishop of Amiens, to all the faithful of Christ who shall inspect the present letter, we make known that in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand seven hundred and two, on the Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension, the twenty-eighth day of May, sacred to St. Honoratus, bishop of Amiens, in the town of Montreuil, having been called and requested by the abbot and monks of the monastery of St. Salvius of the said town, of the Order of St. Benedict, of our diocese, and likewise by the perpetual mayor, the aldermen and the other chief men of the said town, in the choir of the church of the said monastery, we duly and with the ceremonies customarily employed in such matters placed and translated the bodies of the holy confessors Salvius, bishop of Amiens, and Ingaud, from the old reliquary into a newer one.

[6] were translated several times And first, in the presence of the clergy and people, we ordered the said old reliquary to be opened before us in the aforesaid choir; and when it was opened we placed the bones of the said saints upon a table prepared for the purpose, two physicians and surgeons having been called and sworn for this, who named each and every one of the bones as they were placed upon the table, so that they might be committed to writing by a scribe deputed by us. When the bones had been taken out we found several documents, of which the most ancient, on leather, contains these words in uncial letters, written, as it seemed to us, eight hundred years ago (and therefore about the year 900):

HERE RESTS THE BODY OF ST. SALVIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AND TOGETHER WITH IT THAT OF ST. INGAUDIUS, CONFESSOR.

The second, in a somewhat more recent hand, on parchment, gives the very same words; the third, on a leaden plate, in capital letters, reads thus:

IN THE YEAR OF THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD 1111, IN THE FOURTH INDICTION, ON THE 11TH OF JUNE, THE PRESENT BODY OF ST. SALVIUS, BISHOP OF AMIENS, WAS TRANSLATED BY BISHOP GODFREY INTO THIS HONOURABLE VESSEL, IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS, KING OF THE FRANKS. The fourth, etc. [Lestocq, Dissertation sur la translation du corps de S. Firmin le confesseur, évêque d'Amiens, p. 231 ff.].

[7] and laid in new caskets in the fifteenth century But Bishop Feydeau could have added that the reliquary of SS. Salvius and Ingaud was twice renewed in the fifteenth century. The first to do this, on the 20th day of April in the year of the Incarnation 1435, was John, a brother of the Order of Friars Minor and titular bishop of Ross in Dalmatia, acting in the place of Jean Juvénal, bishop of Amiens; and of this solemnity he himself left the following testimony:

TRANSLATION OF THE SAINTS SALVIUS, BISHOP, INGAUD, CONFESSOR, AND VULFLAGIUS, LIKEWISE CONFESSOR.

To all who shall see and hear the present letter or the present public instrument, John, by divine mercy bishop of Ross, acting, as regards what is written below, in the place of the reverend father in Christ and lord, the lord John, by the grace of God bishop of Amiens, everlasting salvation in the Lord. Give undoubted credence to the present letter. We make known by these presents that we, on the date of these presents, in the church of the monastery of St. Salvius of Montreuil-sur-Mer, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Amiens, at the request and supplication of the subprior and convent of the same monastery, the abbot being absent and living in distant parts for a long time, and the prior being dead, opened two ancient caskets or two shrines existing in the same church, of which one was said to be of St. Salvius, confessor and bishop, and the other of blessed Vulflagius, priest and confessor, and visited them with the reverence that was fitting. In the first, indeed, we found two bodies, or their bones, with a certain chasuble and stole of silken cloth, woven in divers colours with beautiful and seemly images, and linen cloths after the manner of shrouds; and there was written there, on lead, on deerskin and on parchment, how there were contained in that place the bodies of the blessed confessors Salvius, bishop of Amiens, and Ingaud, whom the same blessed bishop Salvius cleansed in the sacred font of baptism and happily named Ingaud. In the other shrine we found a certain body, or its bones, with a certain linen cloth after the manner of a shroud, and there was written on deerskin and parchment: HERE IS CONTAINED THE BODY OF ST. VULFLAGIUS, CONFESSOR. Further, after a solemn Mass had been celebrated by us in the same church, the aforesaid two shrines, before the great door of that church, were carried up on high to the greater dais with a solemn procession; and there, after the preaching of the divine word to the praise and glory of God, of the holy confessors, and of the whole heavenly court, and after the life, conduct, virtues, merits and miracles of those confessors had been declared as far as possible, we translated from the first shrine the aforesaid two bodies of the holy confessors Salvius and Ingaud, or all their bones, as appeared at first sight, at least the more principal ones, with the chasuble, stole, shrouds and the other things aforesaid, into another new shrine, notable and comely, made, as was said, from the alms of the faithful; and from the second shrine the aforesaid body of blessed Vulflagius, confessor, or his bones, with the shroud and the other things aforesaid, into another new one, notable and comely, constructed as is stated above, a showing of them having been made to the people in order and one by one; and we placed in the same shrines new briefs or public instruments concerning this translation, drawn up by an apostolic notary, to be enclosed in them. When these things had been reverently performed, as was fitting, the two new shrines, containing the aforesaid holy bodies, were honourably carried back into the said church and placed there beside the high altar. In faith and testimony of all and each of the foregoing, we decreed and caused the present letter, or the present public instrument, to be written by the apostolic notary subscribed below, specially called and required for these things, and to be confirmed with the seal of the spiritual court of the aforesaid lord bishop of Amiens, together with the sign and subscription of that public notary. Given and done in the aforesaid place, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand four hundred and thirty-five, in the thirteenth indiction, on the twentieth day of the month of April, in the pontificate of our most holy father in Christ, the lord Eugene the Fourth, by divine providence pope, in the fifth year of the pontiff.

A copy of the original of this diploma, as it was kept in the monastery of St. Salvius in the year 1664, today deposited in the Royal Library at Brussels under number 8499, was sent by Jean de Bones, parish priest of St. Winwaloe at Montreuil, to our Henschen; who, when illustrating the Acts of St. Wlphlagius, forgot to publish it. Its author John, bishop of Ross or of Rhizinium, acting in the place of Jean Juvénal, bishop of Amiens, when he translated the relics of SS. Wlphlagius [Acta SS., vol. II of June, p. 33; Malbrancq, vol. II, book VI, ch. 32, p. 333; Joseph Ignace Carme, Histoire d'Abbeville, book I, ch. 81, p. 426.], Salvius the bishop and Ingaud into new reliquaries, died his last day in the year 1436 [Farlati, Illyricum Sacrum, vol. VI, p. 414 ff.; Gallia Christiana, vol. XI, col. 938.]. Several bishops of Ross were suffragans to the bishops of Liège Ernst, Tableau des Évêques suffragants de Liège, p. 123 ff..

[8] by the bishops of Amiens. But the reliquary in which the bishop of Rhizinium placed the relics of SS. Salvius and Ingaud the monks of St. Salvius reckoned too little worthy of such great patrons, and therefore they spared no pains to supply a much more precious one for it. And this we gather from a letter written in French by the monks of Montreuil to the aldermen of Amiens in the year 1452, where they say:

"From the most remote times there are kept in our church and monastery several bodies of saints, laid up in reliquaries, among which the bones of St. Salvius, formerly bishop of Amiens. Now the wooden reliquary in which these holy relics rest is overlaid neither with gold, nor with silver, nor with precious gems, which is surely unseemly. Wherefore we have resolved to translate the body of St. Salvius into a new wooden reliquary; and indeed we have already begun to cover it with gold and silver, using partly our own revenues and partly alms given by the people of Montreuil. But the work is far from being finished, or from our having the money necessary to finish it, unless help is given by you and other pious men. For this reason we send to you the monk Jean Denis, who bears this our letter, humbly asking you in the name and memory of God the Creator and of St. Salvius, formerly bishop of Amiens, that you be willing to bestow something from your means for adorning the reliquary of his relics."

Receiving the monks' prayers with no deaf ears, the aldermen gave a silver mark, or a little more than fifty present-day francs Corblet, Hagiologie d'Amiens, vol. III, p. 479., or even several marks, says De la Morlière Antiquités, etc. de la ville d'Amiens, p. 193., for adorning the reliquary; on which the goldsmiths, confusing St. Salvius of Amiens and St. Salvius of Albi, engraved the principal deeds of both holy bishops. We forbear to speak at greater length of the translation made in the year 1702 by Henri Feydeau, which we have already indicated sufficiently. But as for the statement in the Breviary of Amiens of the year 1746 that Pierre Sabatier, likewise bishop of Amiens, translated SS. Salvius and Ingaud into a silver casket seventeen years before, it is to be understood that he recognized their relics without changing the reliquary Corblet, vol. III, p. 481..

[9] The last fortunes of the relics of St. Ingaud are related. But an unhappy fortune awaited the remains of SS. Salvius and Ingaud. In the year 1793, namely, when impious men there, no less than in all France, were trampling sacred things underfoot, there came to Montreuil Joseph Lebon, an apostate priest, prefect of the department of the Pas-de-Calais and one of the chief officers of the Republic (member of the Convention and Representative of the people), to wage a most hostile war against the Catholic religion. He, if credit is to be given to Butler's annotator Vies des Saints, etc., vol. I, p. 87, 11 January, Brussels edition 1846., threw onto a huge pyre the sacred vessels, ornaments and books of the church of St. Salvius, and the very reliquary of St. Salvius, from which all the relics had happily been taken out. That annotator adds that these same sacred remains were recognized by the bishop of Arras on the 22nd day of July in the year 1803. In addition, we have learned from the venerable priest Corblet Corblet, vol. III, pp. 482, 483 and 79. that the silver taken from the larger reliquary, or also from two smaller ones, was sent by that same man to the mint at Paris, and that today nothing survives of the relics except one bone of St. Salvius, placed in a small silver reliquary, and the head of St. Ingaud. Then he adds that these relics of both saints are still kept in the parish church of Montreuil, since nothing of the monastery of St. Salvius remains, and the town hall has been built on its site [Harbaville, Mémorial histor. du Pas-de-Calais, vol. II, p. 154; Roger, Archives de la Picardie et de l'Artois, vol. I, p. 154.].

[10] St. Ingaud in the dioceses of Amiens and Arras That the cult of the saints was paid to St. Ingaud from ancient times is manifest from the fact that already about the year 900 his bones were laid up in the same reliquary beside St. Salvius, and so were held as holy pledges, or also from the fact that in the parchment document of that age, as we have seen, he was honoured with the title of saint:

which cult was continued thereafter without interruption until sacred things were overthrown throughout all France at the end of the eighteenth century. Now too his head, as being a notable pledge of the holy man, is publicly and ecclesiastically exposed. Moreover, his memory is kept in the ancient martyrologies of the diocese of Amiens, as also in the Universal Martyrology of Chastelain Martyrologe Universel, p. 935. and in the second edition of it by the chevalier de Saint-Allais Dictionnaire Universel des Saints, etc., at the end, p. 73., and also in the Hagiology of the venerable priest Pétin Dictionnaire Hagiographique, vol. II, col. 1464.. Add that in the old diocese of Amiens his feast was kept for many years annually with simple rite on the 29th day of October, as appears from the breviary published in the year 1746 by the bishop of Amiens, Louis Gabriel d'Orléans de la Motte. There, at the end of the lessons in honour of St. Salvius, is read: "His body (St. Salvius's), which was honourably buried in the church of blessed Mary, was a long time afterwards translated to Montreuil by St. Godfrey, bishop of Amiens, together with the body of St. Ingaud, where they are honoured with the highest veneration. In the year one thousand seven hundred * and twenty-nine, Peter, bishop of Amiens, recognized the bones of SS. Salvius and Ingaud, and translated them from a wooden into a silver reliquary." These words, as well as the whole office of SS. Ingaud and Salvius, were transferred, at the 29th day of October, into the new Breviary of Arras promulgated in the year 1806 by order of Bishop Hugues Robert de la Tour d'Auvergne; which happened because, by virtue of the concordat concluded between Pius VII and Napoleon, first consul of the French Republic, Montreuil had been made part of the diocese of Arras. Afterwards, in the year 1854, Bishop P. L. Parisis, with the approval of Pius IX, transferred these words into the new Proper Offices of the diocese of Arras.

[11] is venerated. But although Montreuil was separated from the old diocese of Amiens in the year 1801, the ecclesiastical prelates were nevertheless unwilling that the clergy of that diocese should abstain from venerating St. Ingaud on the 29th day of October, but rather ordered that the old lesson of the Breviary be retained, until Antoine de Salinis, bishop of Amiens, in the year 1852, publishing new Offices with the consent of Pius IX, added at the end of the lessons of St. Salvius these words in honour of St. Ingaud: "His body (St. Salvius's), which was honourably buried in the Church of blessed Mary, was a long time afterwards translated to Montreuil by St. Geoffrey, bishop of Amiens, together with the body of St. Ingaud."

And here we lay down the pen concerning St. Ingaud.

* Département du Pas-de-Calais. Department of the Pas-de-Calais.

* Le Vimeux Vimeu

* Somme

* Brêle.

* read: in the year 1702, Henry