Austregildis

ON ST. AUSTREGILDIS, ALSO CALLED AGIA, MOTHER OF ST. LUPUS OF SENS, AT ORLÉANS IN GAUL,

AFTER THE YEAR DCVIII.

Austregildis or Agia, mother of the same St. Lupus, at Orléans. (S.)

Written by J. V.

To St. Lupus, archbishop of Sens, we join St. Austregildis or Agia, that is, The Saint's elogium, holy, as the very name Agia signifies in Greek, the Mother to her holy son, following our Elders, who in the Prætermissi on the fourteenth of June, tome 11 of that month, page 783, judged that this illustrious Matron could be reported on the first of September with St. Lupus her son: yet on another day, as will presently be seen, her memory is kept among the people of Orléans. André du Saussay adorns her with the following elogium in the Catalogue of the Saints &c. after the Gallican Martyrology, page 1233: St. Agia, wife of Betto, an illustrious man, sprung, like himself, from the nobles of the palace, and tracing her descent to the royal stock; and mother of St. Lupus, archbishop of Sens, and sister of two most holy bishops, Austrenus of Orléans and Aunarius of Auxerre: by which merits, as by her birth, being in no way unequal, she merited by divine promise to be the parent of so great a son. She, after the course of a most pious life, fell asleep in Christ with a most happy end at Orléans, where her sacred remains have from that time begun to be honored with religious honors (together with her blessed memory). That the holy Mother was taught by divine revelation of the birth of her son and of his future dignity, is plain from the Life of St. Lupus at number 1: nor is there any doubt that she instilled virtue into him from his tender years, and chose as excellent guardians for the pious forming of his youth her own brothers; until, certainly not against her will, he was enrolled in the clergy. See number 2 in the same place.

[2] A signal token of St. Agia's liberality the same Life exhibits at number 7: the time of her death, her public cult for when St. Lupus, the rest being spent upon the poor, lacked wine, a messenger of his Mother stood by, who announced five hundred measures of wine sent by her generous hand, to be spent forsooth upon the refreshing of Christ's poor; toward whom she was not ignorant that her holy son was most tenderly affected. From this passage and from number 4 in the same place it is established that our Saint was still among the living when St. Lupus was already bishop: and since he was taken to the chair of Sens in the year 609, as we said in the preliminary Commentary to his Life at number 8, it is consequent that the Mother's death cannot be placed before that year. Whence it is too vaguely marked as about the year [ ]. But whether and how long she survived after the year 609, is in obscurity. Wherefore we have noted her death as after the eighth year of the seventh century. As to what pertains to the Saint's public cult, Peyronet reckons Agia in the Catalogue of the Saints, page 369. Mothier, at the end of the Roman Martyrology published in French at Paris in 1705, in the Table of the Saints of Gaul who are not in the Roman one, adds the place and the day: Austregildis, at Orléans, the ninth of October. On the same day she is announced by Castellan: At Orléans, St. Austregildis (Aga), mother of St. Lupus; whose relics are in St. Anianus's. But the Paris Martyrology of the year 1727, in the Addenda and emendations, page XIV, marks her on the eighth day before the Ides of October, or the eighth of the same, in these words: At Orléans, of St. Austregildis the widow, whose surname was Aga, mother of St. Lupus afterwards bishop of Sens, whose body was found in the basilica of St. Anianus in the time of king Robert: and it notes in the margin, as Castellan also does, that she died about DC; but not exactly enough, as has been shown above. The memory of St. Agia is held in a manuscript Calendar of Orléans on the fourteenth of June.

[3] and the translation of her relics. Of the translation of her sacred body the following is read at the end of the cited Calendar: From an old Manuscript of the church of St. Anianus of Orléans… There were translated into that church by Robert the bodies of SS. Anianus … and of Agia the widow. A little more fully another Calendar of the Saints of Orléans, likewise in manuscript, reports this on the fourteenth of June: Robert, king of France, built a church in his (St. Anianus's) honor… And in the thirty-third year of his reign, in the times of Oldoricus *, bishop of Orléans, having called together the prelates of his kingdom, he saw to it that his body, with the bodies of the saints Euspicius … and Agia, mother of St. Lupus, was translated thither. André du Saussay commemorates a twofold translation of blessed Agia; the first on the fifteenth of June, the other on the twenty-sixth of October. Of the same Charles de Saussay makes mention in the Annals of the church of Orléans, page 141: St. Agia, mother of St. Lupus, is celebrated in the church of St. Anianus, whose body was brought thither together with the bodies of St. Anianus, Euspicius, and others, afterwards by Robert, king of the Franks, son of Hugh Capet. That solemn translation, which he describes below from page 387 out of Helgaud of Fleury in the Epitome of the Life of king Robert, happened in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MXXIX, in the twelfth Indiction. But in what precedes Helgaud is deceived, where he says that Robert, as Duchesne reads it in tome 4 of the Writers, page 73, in the thirty-sixth year of his ordination, benediction, and assumption as king, summoned the archprelates: for the year of Christ 1029 was the forty-second of Robert, from the time when he began to reign with his father; but only the thirty-third of his sole monarchy, as is clear from the manuscript text of the translation of the relics of St. Euspicius in the cited Duchesne, page 147. And he died on the twentieth of July in the year 1031, as Labbe testifies in the chronological Epitome, and Pagi in the Critica on Baronius at the years 1033 and 1034, the thirty-fourth year from his entering upon the monarchy being not yet completed. Finally, as Saussay narrates on the seventeenth of November, page 898, in the year MDLXII, which will be forever mournful for Gaul, when the Calvinist heretics, having intercepted Orléans and filled it with sacrileges, were laying it waste with a pitiable slaughter, they scattered, being tragically handled, the bodies of very many Saints and also of St. Agia, mother of St. Lupus, archbishop of Sens. The unspeakable barbarity with which they raged there may be read in Odorico Rinaldi at the said year, number 145 and following. More concerning St. Austregildis or Agia we have not found: if the learned men of Orléans or others should supply her Life or any Acts, it will be most welcome to us; and they can be inserted in our Work on the eighth or ninth of October.

* elsewhere, Odolricus