Giles of Saint-gilles

ON ST. GILES OF SAINT-GILLES, ABBOT, IN OCCITANIA,

PERHAPS BETWEEN DCCXI AND DCCXXV.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Giles, abbot, at Saint-Gilles in Occitania. (S.)

Written by J. S.

§ I. The veneration of the Saint spread far and wide.

[ ] That the sanctity of Giles the abbot was acknowledged at least from the ninth century, or from the year 817, we gather from the Assembly of Aachen of that same year, in which, in Labbe, tome 7 of the Councils, column [ ], the monastery of our Saint is recounted in these words: [The sanctity of Giles acknowledged from the ninth century: yet his memory of that time] The monastery of St. Giles in the Flavian Valley. Hence we can further conjecture that Giles from that time, and verisimilarly from the preceding century, was honored with an ecclesiastical cult in his own church, and perhaps in the whole diocese of Nîmes and the neighboring places. Nevertheless the memory of St. Giles is not found in the genuine Martyrologies of the ninth or tenth century, which we suspect happened because the Saint's Life was not yet written. Baronius indeed, in his annotations on the Roman Martyrology at the first of September, where he had announced the Saint in these words, In the province of Narbonne, of St. Giles, abbot and confessor, adds these words: Of whom also the Martyrologies of Bede and Ado. But this must be understood of their enlarged Martyrologies; since in their Genuine text St. Giles is not found. In the additions to Bede, as his Martyrology is published among us before tome 2 of March, at the first of September the following are read from various enlarged codices: First, Of St. Giles the abbot. Second: In the Province, of St. Giles the confessor. Third: In the place of the Valley which is called Flavian, in view of the sea, the birthday of St. Giles the abbot, born at Athens of a father Theodore and a mother Pelagia.

[2] [is not read inserted in the genuine Martyrologies, although it was afterwards added to most:] By Usuard also St. Giles was not recorded, although he was afterwards added to almost all the Usuardine codices, yet in a different phrase and in a different place of the same day, as Sollier proves in his Usuard at the first of September, subjoining this: So great a variation in the codices is, unless I am mistaken, an evident argument that Giles does not belong to the original reading of Usuard. In the most ancient Usuard codex of Prato it is thus read: On the same day the birthday of St. Giles the abbot. But the editor of that codex confesses that they are not the words of Usuard himself, when he observes this: An ancient hand supplied Giles to this article, and so ancient that the difference is obscure. But that it is another than the first Sollier knew, and we readily confess. The codex of Centula in Sollier has a brief but honorific elogium of the Saint, conceived in these words: On the same day the deposition of St. Giles the abbot, whom for the merit of his sanctity every kind of men seeks and venerates. Longer elogia occur in other codices; but I omit them, because they are taken from the Acts. The memory of St. Giles is announced also in the ancient Hagiology of Franco-Gaul, which Labbe published in tome 2 of the Library of Manuscripts, page 702, where it is read: On the same day (the first of September) the deposition of blessed Giles the abbot. Most of the Hieronymian transcripts lack St. Giles. Yet his memory is added in the codex of Corbie, which d'Achéry published in tome 2 of the reprinted Spicilegium, page 17, and in that of Augsburg among us after tome VII of June, page 215; and his memory is found in an ancient Calendar which Martène published from a Manuscript of the monastery of Lyre in tome 3 of the Thesaurus of anecdota, column [ ]. But these monuments are not older than the eleventh century, or certainly the tenth. The more recent writers announce St. Giles in rivalry, and compose various elogia from his Acts. But it is not necessary to adduce them, nor Peter de Natalibus and the author of our manuscript Florarium, who copied the Acts for the greater part, and heaped new errors upon the errors asserted in them.

[3] Nevertheless it will be worthwhile to add from the Martyrology of André du Saussay some things pertaining to the veneration of the Saint, Saussay's elogium on the Saint's posthumous glory. omitting his very long elogium on his life, which he composed partly from the Acts and partly from conjectures. St. Giles's death being reported, and the concert of angels which is said to have been then heard, he thus goes on: Whose sanctity Christ willed to be attested by frequent miracles: and blessed Fulbert, prelate of Chartres, who first wove his Office, celebrated his praises in prose and in verse. St. Godfrey also, bishop of Amiens, having experienced the power of so great a Helper, greatly venerated his merits: which Pope Urban IV by an express constitution commanded to be venerated with the rite of a double feast. And our forefathers adorned his memory with many testimonies of honor, which the Gallican church has by ancestral custom been wont to venerate with a celebration common with St. Lupus. For the perpetuation of which common glory there is seen built at Paris on the royal road a parish church, noble by the title of each most holy Confessor, and conspicuous by perpetual help. For the rest, his sacred body, which had rested laid up for several centuries in his own monastery, being raised from the earth in the time of the Albigensian heresy, was found altogether incorrupt. And being carried thence to Toulouse, it is until now preserved in the basilica of St. Saturninus, with the most sacred bodies of many apostles, martyrs, and confessors, with a befitting cult, at an altar of his name and in a precious chest.

[4] We cannot doubt that the Saint's cult first began in his own monastery, [The Saint's most ancient cult in his own monastery, which is famous for votive pilgrimages;] where he was buried. It is verisimilar also that that veneration was begun not long after the Saint's death, although no monuments exist by which we are made certain at what time it began. This public veneration was followed by votive pilgrimages, by which St. Giles's tomb became so famous that the place at length grew into a town, which even today keeps the name of Giles *. Whether these pilgrimages were begun at once from the Saint's death is not established. But certainly they were already much in use before the middle of the eleventh century: for in Mabillon, tome 4 of the Annals, page 473, a document of the year 1046 is praised, in which four places most renowned for pilgrimages are recounted, in these words: Going to the places of the Saints, both to blessed Mary and St. Peter at Rome, and to St. James and St. Giles &c. In the Benedictine writer of the recent History of Aquitaine, among the documents in tome 3, column 372, many places famous for pilgrimages are recounted, and among them St. Giles's in Provence. But that monument seems to belong to the thirteenth century. In the Life of B. John Opilio among us, tome IV of June, page 844, that blessed man is said to have made a pilgrimage with others to St. Giles's; which seems to have been done in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. From what has been said gather that the pilgrimages to St. Giles's, which verisimilarly had their beginning not long after the Saint's death, were continued for many centuries.

[5] the same cult begun in a wonderful manner at Liège, Meanwhile churches were built to the Saint in various places, and his veneration widely propagated. A very ancient one is at Liège, where it is said to have begun in a wonderful manner about the year 976 under the prelate Notger. Hear our Fisen in the History of the church of Liège, book 7, at the year 976, where he narrates the matter in this manner: On the highest summit of that same Publicus Mons there were likewise laid, under the prelate Notger, the foundations of St. Giles's. A certain Goderanus was the author of it, sprung from Narbonnese Gaul, from the Town of St. Giles, a man of humble condition, as one who, leading a bear and an ape about through various provinces and practicing the player's trade, sought his living. When his age was already impaired, God put a better mind into him. He strove to exhibit a holier spectacle of himself to the dwellers in heaven. His theater was the Publicus Mons, among woods infested with robberies: where, for the novitiate of a better life, he first undertook to lead travelers back into the way, if ever by chance they went astray. For what higher thing should a man of such condition undertake? Then he began to raise huts and little cottages, the bear carrying the material, that he might show hospitality to travelers, but chiefly to the poor. Amid these things he felt brighter rays of divine light poured into his mind; which also, seizing the occasion, he began to send into his guests. For no one will easily shut up fire in his bosom. And such was the fruit that very many flocked together, not only from the road but out of a mere zeal for hearing him, men of the sacred order as well as of the profane; and very many even passed over into his discipline.

[6] where a church is built to the Saint, afterwards enlarged into a monastery; He therefore built a sacred house to St. Giles, whose client, forsooth, he remembered himself to be by birth. He added huts for enclosing pious women, who by his holy examples and exhortation, all human things being cast off, gave themselves into the

service of God alone. In holiness and in the ardor of a pious mind a certain Judila stood out above the rest; whom Giles calls a venerable woman and beloved of God. Happily, and with a great reputation of sanctity, Goderanus closed his life. He was buried before the altar of SS. Dionysius and Lambert. And Judila was laid next to him. The players and harpers, who had first tried to call their comrade back from his pious purpose, undertook to bring every year to St. Giles's, in memory of the dead man, a wax taper, on the Wednesday next after the birthday of St. John the Baptist. And today, after so many centuries, they keep the ancient custom. These are the cradle-beginnings of the monastery of St. Giles. A time will come when we shall give its progress. Thus far Fisen, who afterwards treats of the same church in various places. But those things pertain less to our purpose. Let it suffice therefore to have said briefly that that church grew into a monastery, which in the twelfth century was given to the Regular Canons, whose provosts and abbots Denis de Sainte-Marthe enumerates in tome 3 of Gallia Christiana from column [ ].

[7] another church is dedicated to the Saint, and enriched with his relics; After the middle of the eleventh century another church was raised to the Saint by B. Theoderic, abbot of Andage or of St. Hubert in the Ardennes forest. The matter is narrated in the Life of B. Theoderic, in Mabillon, sixth Benedictine century, part 2, pages 573 and 574, and among us in tome IV of August, page 858. The writer of the Life, anonymous but contemporary, first reports this of Theoderic: And not far from the gate of the outer court (of the monastery of Andage), a spacious church having been built, he wished to dedicate it to St. Giles; and when, out of a desire of seeking relics from the Saint's body, he was going to St. Giles's, he made his journey through the city which is called Troyes * &c. And then there is added in Mabillon: At length, returned from his journey, among other works of probity he used a very prudent counsel, that he should divide into two equal parts the relics which he had brought: one of which he kept for himself and for his own church, the other he imparted to the church of St. Giles, where he himself had appointed a priest. Yet these latter things were not in our Manuscript, as was said in the Annotations there at letter ^g. Further, I have said that these things were done after the middle of the eleventh century, because Theoderic was created abbot in the year 1055, but died more probably in the year 1087, as may be seen in Mabillon's preliminary Observations as well as in the Commentary preliminary to the Life among us.

[8] Toward the end of the eleventh century the veneration of our Saint penetrated into Hungary, [the veneration of the Saint propagated into Hungary, a monastery being built there,] a monastery being built in his honor, which was made subject to his chief monastery. Alberic the monk in his Chronicle at the year 1078 hands down the matter obscurely in these words: In Hungary reigned the holy king Ladislaus, son of Bela the champion, for eighteen years. He founded in Hungary the most noble abbey of Sentigis, into which none are wont to be received but Franks. Light will be brought by the letters of Pope Paschal II to Hugh, abbot of St. Giles's in Septimania, given in the year 1106, by which the subjection of the abbot of Somogyvár in Hungary to the abbot of St. Giles's is confirmed. Baluze published these letters in tome 2 of the Miscellanea from page 183 in this manner: Paschal, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved son in Christ Hugh, abbot of the monastery of St. Giles, which is situated in the Flavian valley, and to his successors to be regularly promoted, forever. It is worthy to afford a ready consent to religious desires, that faithful devotion may obtain a speedy effect. Ladislaus indeed, of good memory, king of the Hungarians, to the honor of God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, in memory of the holy confessor Giles, founded the church of Somogyvár, and offered it, by the hand of Odilo of happy memory your predecessor, to the monastery of blessed Giles, over which by God's authorship you preside: where also his venerable body rests. This offering, forsooth, made for the salvation of souls, we, God bestowing it, confirm by the authority of the Apostolic See, to which your monastery of the Flavian valley is acknowledged to have been given as a stipend by that same St. Giles. Therefore we sanction by the present decree the deliberation of the above-mentioned king, that whosoever shall be abbot of Somogyvár shall profess obedience to the abbot of your monastery, which we have said was built in the Flavian valley by St. Giles, and shall perseveringly observe it; that the affairs which shall befall the monastery be ended by the king's counsel, and that none besides the king presume to judge concerning the goods of the church. The rest may be seen in the place assigned. And the letters are marked as given at Parma … on the fourth day before the Nones of November, in the fifteenth Indiction, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MCVI, and the eighth of the pontificate of the lord Pope Paschal II. Mabillon in tome 5 of the Annals, page 137, reports these things also. Péter Pázmány in the Catalogue of the abbeys of Hungary recounts this one in these words: Of Somogy, of St. Giles, of the diocese of Veszprém. It flourished in the year MCCCII.

[9] the institution of his festival in the church of Le Puy: In the year 1096 the feast of St. Giles was instituted in the church of Le Puy, Raymond, count of Toulouse, seeing to it, who gave many things to this end to the church of Le Puy. The diploma of this donation the recent writer of the History of Occitania recites in tome 2 among the documents, column 343, from which I append a few things: I Raymond of St. Giles, count of the men of Toulouse as well as of Rodez, for the redemption of my offenses and those of my parents, out of love of St. Giles, whom in many ways of injury I have frequently offended; to the end that his feast be celebrated yearly in the church of Le Puy and in the other churches subject to it; and that in every assembly of the canons of Le Puy, on that day of the festival, a yearly meal from the service of my bounty, such as may befit so great a feast and so venerable an assembly, be perpetually furnished; and that a candle, so long as I live, may burn unceasingly day and night for me before the venerable image of the Mother of God upon the altar &c. … I give &c. There are subjoined the donations of the count made to the aforesaid end. It can also be observed here that the title of St. Giles was in use for this count of Toulouse, as also for not a few others about the same time. Nevertheless from this donation it cannot certainly be inferred that the festival of St. Giles had not been celebrated before in the church of Le Puy: for Raymond's donation could have been made that his festival might thereafter be celebrated more solemnly.

[10] the ancient cult of the Saint in the monastery of St. Quentin de Mont, Ancient too is the veneration of the Saint in the abbey of St. Quentin de Mont near Péronne in Picardy. For in the Life of St. Godfrey, bishop of Amiens, who after the middle of the eleventh century was a monk in the said monastery of St. Quentin, there is said to have been there an oratory of St. Giles, and a miracle wrought at his altar is narrated. Hear Nicholas the monk, the writer of that Life, in Surius on the eighth of November: And since mention has been made of the oratory of blessed Giles the abbot, we shall report a memorable thing which happened there. On that midnight on which the narrowness of the manger once received Christ born of the Virgin Mother, a certain monk named Richard, a man especially reverend, who was said to have led the monastic life more than fifty years, wished to offer the Sacrifice there. And when, the linen cloths being spread, he had set upon them the chalice and the other things wont to be used for the Sacrifice, he incautiously left there a burning taper, and withdrew into the choir of the chanting brethren: where, when he was reciting the sixth lesson assigned him by the precentor, he remembers the taper, and becomes much anxious, because he could not, the lesson being interrupted, hasten thither, nor indicate to anyone what was troubling him. The lesson being finished, half dead he hastens thither: and when he thought all things already reduced to ashes and embers, he saw that the taper had fallen upon the linens, that the locks of the flames were spread wide, and yet all things unharmed, and — what can scarcely be believed — all things so disposed that the fire seemed to have fallen not upon straw or linen cloths, but upon masses of marble or of iron or of some other metal. Astonished at the thing, he calls many, that they may be eyewitnesses of so great a miracle: who, when they had curiously inspected everything, could not find even a trace of any scorching. The writer attributes the cause of the miracle to relics found in the altar. But perhaps it could no less probably be attributed to St. Giles, whose the altar was; although for the rest I have narrated the miracle rather to prove the Saint's cult in that abbey, than to ascribe that miracle to his protection.

[11] At Bamberg in Germany the cult of St. Giles was increased by St. Otto, bishop of Bamberg, when the twelfth century was not much advanced. which was increased also at Bamberg by relics carried thither: This is testified by Andreas, who collected the Life of St. Otto, from which we gave a fragment, or Supplement to the other Lives, in tome 1 of July from page 456. The praised Andreas at number 3 thus has it: But desiring still further to enlarge the place most dear to him (Otto), he built beneath the mount of St. Michael a chapel of St. Giles with a hospital house, fit for the reception of the poor and of pilgrims. Then, the suburban place of the chapel founded being described, which was commonly called Lugenhubel, or the hill of lying, he goes on to our purpose thus at number 4: This therefore this spiritual father, desiring to change it for the better, who knew himself appointed for this, that he should root out evil things and plant whatever is good; ordered that hill to be leveled, and a church of B. Giles to be built there. Dwellings also convenient for the poor and for pilgrims to be built: that where before the servitude of the enemy sprouted, there thereafter, by divine worship and by the almsdeeds of the poor, gains of souls might grow up. At that time a certain canon of the church of St. James, Wichodo by name, visiting blessed Giles for the sake of prayer, procured magnificent relics, that is, his thumb; which the pious Otto, having sagaciously obtained it from him, enclosed in the altar of St. Giles with many other relics, and, solemnly dedicating the church, made his memory more celebrated throughout the whole place than it had hitherto been.

[12] Not a few monasteries also were founded in various places of Germany in honor of St. Giles. various monasteries founded to him throughout Germany. Three of them Mabillon recounts in tome 5 of the Annals, page 614, writing thus at the year 1115: In the same year it is read that the monastery of St. Giles was founded outside Brunswick by Gertrude, countess of Northeim, formerly wife of count Henry, who founded the monastery of Bursfelde. She obtained the body of St. Auctor from Bruno, bishop of Trier, and laid it up in that place where she built a most magnificent monastery of monks in honor of St. Giles, with the help of duke Lothar, afterwards emperor, who had her daughter as wife… Another most noble monastery of St. Giles, of maidens, was founded about that time near Münster * of the Westphalians, whose first abbess was blessed Adelheid or Alheid. … This monastery still survives under the congregation of Bursfelde. There was also another monastery of St. Giles in the diocese of Halberstadt, which now belongs to the Lutherans. Bucelin in Germania sacra, part 2, page 3, describes the monastery of St. Giles at Nuremberg in these words: Formerly a magnificent monastery of St. Benedict, founded by the emperor Conrad III in the year of Christ MCXL, and handed over to the Irish or Scottish Fathers, most well deserving of the Christian cause throughout Germany

until the year MCDXVIII, when, these failing in number and in zeal of religion, Germans were substituted for them. Today it obeys the magistrate, the monks in the city being extinct after the change of religion, and the architecture of the most ample basilica is exceedingly celebrated, an excellent proof of its ancient splendor. I could add to these other churches dedicated to the Saint, even at Rome: but these will suffice to show how far the veneration of St. Giles was propagated in the twelfth century: for to recount all the places sacred to his name is not the business of this place.

[13] At length, after the middle of the thirteenth century, Pope Urban IV ordered an Office of nine lessons concerning St. Giles to be inserted into the Roman Breviary, [The Office inserted into the Roman Breviary: the Saint is invoked with others whom they called Helpers:] and to be recited with a semi-double rite, as Baillet writes from Gavanti on the first of September under St. Giles. But about the middle of the sixteenth century that Office was reduced to a simple one, which was afterwards confirmed by St. Pius V, and has been kept until now. Nevertheless even now many dioceses venerate St. Giles with a more celebrated cult, not only in Gaul but in other kingdoms and provinces also, especially in our Belgium. Hence it has come about that the lessons which are recited on the Saint's festival are various according to the variety of the churches. To the veneration of our Saint also, and to the singular confidence of the faithful in his help, pertain the things which our Papebroch discussed in tome III of April, page 149, under St. George. He reports there that for some centuries there flourished in various churches of the West the practice of invoking fifteen Saints, whom they call helpers. He says that the origin and cause of that devotion is unknown: Nor does any other cause (he says) seem able more conveniently to be assigned by conjecture, than that each of them is wont to be more specially invoked and venerated for various necessities &c. And among those fifteen Saints St. Giles also is found, as may be seen there from the collect of the Mass of the fifteen most holy Helpers. In other ancient Missals there is found a Mass of five privileged Saints, and among them likewise St. Giles is numbered. From which it is clear how great was the piety of the faithful toward this Saint, and how great their confidence in his intercession.

[14] Boleslaus, king of Poland, is believed to have been born by his merits. Further, this great confidence will be confirmed from a benefit obtained by the king of Poland, which it will be worthwhile to append from Benedict Gonon, who reports it in the Lives of the Fathers of the West, book 3, page 155, under Giles, in these words: But it must not be omitted how by the prayers and merits of this Saint Boleslaus, king of Poland, was obtained and born. And John Herburt writes the whole history in this manner: Judith, wife of Wladislaus, the pious king of the Poles, when she could not have children, and was continually wearying God with assiduous prayers, fastings, and almsdeeds for offspring, being admonished by Lambert, bishop of Cracow, sends envoys into the province of Narbonne, to the monastery of the divine Giles, where his body was laid up, with most ample gifts both for the church and for the monks. They set forth why they come and what they ask. A three days' fast is proclaimed to the monks, God is prayed that, out of regard for his pleasing servant Giles, he would grant male offspring to the pious princes. And so in that three days' space it is revealed in a vision to a certain aged and pious monk that what had been sought with so great zeal had been granted. And when the envoys had been dismissed and had returned, at length Boleslaus was born of Judith. Which Boleslaus, when he had grown up, accompanied by a few priests and other pious men, undertook in private habit a pilgrimage to the tomb of the divine Giles his protector, and made that journey for the greatest part barefoot; passing by no church, no monastery, no dwelling of the needy, in short no priest and no beggar, without bringing forth upon him something of his liberality and munificence. Fifteen days he stayed at the tomb of the divine one, giving himself to fastings and supplications. Thus John Herburt. The Boleslaus of whom here there is treatment was the third king of Poland of that name, created at the beginning of the twelfth century.

* commonly Saint Gilles

* Troyes

* Münster

§ II. The translations of the sacred body, and the relics.

[ ] [The Saint's body, which was at first buried in the church of St. Peter, translated] The body of St. Giles long remained in the church sacred to St. Peter, which we shall prove was built by the Saint himself. That it was elevated in the tenth century Saxi writes in the Pontifical of Arles, citing the Breviary of St. Giles, which is not at hand for us. Hear the writers of Gallia Christiana, tome 6, column 483, among the abbots of St. Giles: Autulphus or Antulphus presided (in the year) CMXXV… While he sat, the sacred remains of St. Giles were raised from the earth, as is read in the Pontifical of Arles, by the author Saxi. On what occasion this elevation was made I do not find. But there can be a suspicion that either then or at another time the sacred body was translated to the greater church, which without doubt was dedicated to St. Giles. Certainly, besides the smaller church of St. Peter, there was there another church, also ancient, which together with the former was pulled down in the year 1116, that a more magnificent one might be built. These things are gathered from the book of Miracles, which Peter William, a monk of that time and place, inscribed to Hugh his abbot in these words: To the most reverend father the lord Hugh, abbot of the monastery of St. Giles, which is situated in the Flavian valley, brother Peter, surnamed William, librarian of the same place, the due service in all things as a son. This inscription Mabillon brings forward in tome 5 of the Annals, page 623.

[16] And from the book he presently recites the following to our purpose: verisimilarly to the church which was dedicated to St. Giles himself: While … in the year of the Lord's Incarnation MCXVI we were laying the foundations of the new basilica, because the other church was less capacious and could not hold the multitude of those coming, we gave our labor to the pulling down of the churches. And when we were destroying the greater church, which with three crypts had been built of old with very great squared stones, and also the church of St. Peter, which could hold eighty brethren in the choir, together with the stone porch which adjoined it on the north side, and which stretched lengthwise from the head of the upper church to the extremity of the church of St. Peter, in which the brethren were wont to go out in procession on solemn days, and which of old was called the Sacred Way, and also when we were destroying the church of St. Mary; the wondrous power of almighty God was made manifest. For amid so many masses of ruins and of falling buildings, by the intervention of blessed Giles and by his defense of the faithful people, never was any of those entering and going out of those churches touched by the blow of a single stone. The time here assigned for the founding of this basilica is confirmed by the following inscription carved in the cloister beside the wall of the church, which is contained in tome 6 of Gallia Christiana, column 485, expressed in these words: In the year of the Lord MCXVI this church of St. Giles began to be built in the month of April, on the second day of the week in the Octave of Easter. In the same place, concerning the magnificence of that same church and its destruction, the following are subjoined: And that this basilica was built with so elegant a work, the lower church and the ruins of the upper testify, so that anyone could boldly assert, with Pope Julius II, that scarcely could its like have been found in the whole kingdom of Gaul. But, the Calvinist heresy raging in the years MDLXII and MDCXXII, it was devastated and for the greatest part overthrown, and until now lies buried under the ruins. And in this basilica the Saint's body was verisimilarly deposited, and in it preserved, until it was translated to Toulouse, as we shall presently say.

[17] the book of Miracles written, from which a few things are narrated. But first, on occasion of the praised book of Miracles, which has not been seen by us, we shall insert in this place those miracles which Mabillon copied from that book in the place of the Annals just assigned: In those miracles, says Mabillon, which he commemorates as partly seen by himself and partly received from others, he makes mention of two men saved from destruction while the new church of St. Giles was being built… In another chapter is reported the healing of a certain Breton whose hand had become withered because he had plowed the ground on the feast-day of St. Giles. This is said to have happened in Hither Brittany, which is also called Lesser Britain, where in the bishopric of the city of Nantes a certain village is called Bonobria *, and there is there a church in honor of blessed Martin, in which the brethren of the monastery of St. Florentius of Saumur serve almighty God, in which also there is an altar built in honor of blessed Giles… Finally, to omit the rest, among those of St. Giles one miracle is reported of a certain German, sprung from the city of Ciza, who, being three times hanged, having invoked St. Giles, suffered no harm. The witness is an honorable man, praiseworthy in all things, named Guirardus, abbot of the monastery of St. Mary, which is situated on the island which is called Hedoa. Let it suffice to have reported these things as a specimen from that book of miracles. I could wish he had given more, or that the book had come to our hands. But let us return to the translation of the body.

[18] [The body translated to Toulouse: which some place in the time of the Albigensians,] All writers agree that the body of St. Giles was translated to Toulouse, and is there preserved in the church of St. Saturninus. But nowhere do I find explained about what year, or by whose efforts, the sacred body was carried thither. Saussay indeed, whose words I gave at number 3, asserts that the translation happened in the time of the Albigensian heresy; but that reckoning of time is vague, and no foundation for it is adduced. Yet various writers afterwards asserted the same, and that opinion, though destitute of reasons, has been inserted into the recent Paris Martyrology at the first of September, where an elogium of this kind is woven for our Saint: In the Flavian Valley of the district of Nîmes in Occitania, of blessed Giles the abbot, whose tomb gave its name to the basilica built over it, and afterwards to the town built round about, whence his body, on account of the disturbances of the Albigensians, being translated to Toulouse, was deposited in the church of St. Saturninus. If this opinion is true, the translation must have been made in the twelfth century, or before the middle of the thirteenth; for at that time the disturbances of the Albigensians flourished.

[19] others will have it done later. But the present writers of Gallia Christiana, tome 6, column 502, contend that that translation was made much later, when they write this: Antony I Folquerii presided (over the abbey of St. Giles) from domestic charters from the eighteenth day of February in the year MCDXXI until the year MCDXLIV. On the first of August MCDXXIII he agreed with his chapter about laying up the head of St. Giles in a reliquary of gilded silver, to which work Nicholas, bishop of Nîmes, by letters given on the twenty-fourth of July granted forty Tours pounds out of uncertain pious legacies; and by other letters given on the same day and year, bestowing an indulgence of forty days upon all the faithful of Christ who should lend helping hands for the said repair, he asserts that the body of St. Giles rests in the same monastery: which indeed Pope Clement IV in various bulls

left attested: and accordingly the sacred body of blessed Giles was translated to Toulouse not in the time of the Albigensians, but rather in the sixteenth century. Thus far those writers, to whom I could more safely assent if they had brought forward the very words of the letters which they allege. Certainly what is said of a translation made in the sixteenth century does not altogether please me, since Nicolas Bertrand, who wrote not long after the beginning of that century on the Deeds of the men of Toulouse, folio 5 verso, among other bodies of Saints which he liberally attributes to the people of Toulouse, also recounts the body of blessed Giles the abbot. I am therefore compelled to leave the matter uncertain.

[20] That the head was separated from the rest of the body is clear from what has just been said about the head being enshrined in a reliquary of gilded silver. The head formerly kept apart: other relics It was therefore in the year 1423 in the monastery of St. Giles. In a manuscript Calendar found in Chifflet's keeping there is read inscribed the finding of the head of St. Giles, as was noted in the Prætermissi on the second of June. But neither about that finding nor about the head itself do I find anything further there. I fear lest perhaps it did not escape the sacrilegious hands of the Calvinists, by whom in the year 1562 the town of St. Giles was seized, the sacred relics scattered, and the churches destroyed, as the praised writers of Gallia Christiana testify at column 506. Other relics of St. Giles are asserted in various places. Of the thumb carried to Bamberg and of other relics to the monastery of Andage we have already made mention at numbers 7 and 12. Among the very many relics which in the year 1587 were brought to Lisbon and placed with signal display in the church of the professed house of the Society of Jesus, there are numbered also relics of St. Giles the abbot, which were carried about partly in the seventh and partly in the twelfth shrine, as may be seen in tome 2 of January, page 12.

[21] Among the relics of thirty-six Saints which the abbey of St. Salvator of the Cistercian Order possesses here at Antwerp, in various places there are found also relics of St. Giles the abbot. These had been preserved, with relics of St. Hyacinth, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Paulinus of Nola, and St. Catherine, virgin and martyr, in the metropolitan church of Esztergom in Hungary: in the year 1480 they were given by Casimir, king of Poland, to Alfonso V, king of Portugal; in the year 1487 they were examined and approved by three Cardinals, and were brought from Portugal by Antonio, possessor of the kingdom of Portugal, until he was driven out by Philip II, king of Spain: for Antonio, a fugitive from the kingdom of Portugal into Gaul, took with him a chest filled with many relics of Saints, which in the year 1594 he gave to his son Emmanuel; and he in the year 1633 to Christopher Butkens, abbot of St. Salvator at Antwerp. All these things are fully shown by Franciscus Dieriox, abbot of the praised church of St. Salvator, in the Opusculum entitled The credit and tradition of the sacred relics &c.; and also among us in tome 1 of April, under Mary of Egypt, pages 72 and 73, and further on page 898.

[22] Raissius in the Belgian Hierogazophylacium commemorates various relics of our Saint. of Belgium, On page 160, enumerating the relics of the college of the English of the Society of Jesus at Saint-Omer, which in the year 1611 were approved by Jacques Blase the prelate, he recounts among them a bone of St. Giles, abbot of Arles. To the abbey of Liessies in Hainaut, on page 281, he ascribes a tooth of St. Giles, abbot of Arles. On page 378 he assigns to the abbey of St. Nicolas-des-Prés at Tournai, of the Regular Canons, a notable part of the arm of the same Saint. On page 330 he testifies that in the collegiate church of Walcourt * of B. Mary there is in great veneration a certain gilded cross, adorned with gems and precious stones, because in it .. precious relics of the Saints are enshrined, and among them he numbers one of St. Giles, abbot of Arles. To the Charterhouse of Rutile on the bank of the Meuse, on page 454, he attributes a great bone of St. Giles, abbot of Arles. And finally on page 470, among the relics of the abbey of the Holy Sepulchre at Cambrai, he recounts a sacred splinter of the arm of St. Giles, abbot of Arles. Here it may be observed in passing that our Saint was not properly abbot of Arles; but that he is so called by this writer because he is said to have lived some time at Arles with St. Caesarius.

[23] of Germany and of Italy. Gelenius in his Work on the sacred and civil greatness of Cologne ascribes relics of St. Giles to various churches of that city: namely on page 264 to the collegiate church of St. Gereon, on page 289 to the collegiate church of St. Cunibert, on page 372 to the church of St. Pantaleon, and on page 412 to the parish church of St. Lupus; but he does not set forth what relics are held in those places. But on page 311, enumerating the sacred treasure of the collegiate church of the Blessed Virgin Mary ad Gradus, he recounts in it the head of St. Giles the abbot, an illustrious pilgrim from Greece for Christ, that he might merit to become his fellow-citizen and of his household. Whether this head is the same which we said at number 20 was still preserved in the year 1423 in the church of St. Giles, I do not inquire. Perhaps part of the head had been at Cologne already before, and the other part had remained in the monastery: for a part of a head is not rarely taken for the head. The praised writer on page 361 affirms that in the collegiate church of St. Cecilia the arm of St. Giles the abbot is held in veneration. At Prague in the metropolitan church of St. Vitus there are preserved a part of the arm of St. Giles the abbot, brought from the Gauls in the year MCCCLVI, and two other fragments, as the Phosphorus of Prague testifies on page 517. At Bologna also relics of St. Giles are held, which Masini in Bologna Surveyed, page 439, writes are held in veneration in the church of St. Stephen and in the church of St. Ignatius of the Society of Jesus. Finally Piazza in his Hemerology at the first of September ascribes relics of St. Giles to the church of St. Agatha at Rome. Nor do I doubt that the sacred pledges of the same Saint are shown in other places also.

* Boneuvre

* Walcourt

§ III. The Acts of St. Giles, ancient after a fashion, but sprinkled with fables: hence arise controversies about the time in which the Saint lived, and other matters connected with that time.

[ ] The Acts of St. Giles are written in so intricate a manner, The Acts of St. Giles, even though they are found in very many codices, and those exceedingly ancient, are so composed that they cannot obtain undoubted credit from those who are wont to sift ancient writings, and labor to separate, so far as can be done, doubtful things from certain and true from false. Hence the more recent writers vehemently accuse those Acts as foul with anachronisms. Hear, for all, Mabillon, who in the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order, in the Catalogue of the omitted before tome 1, at the word Ægidius, wrote this: We have found three writers of the Life of St. Giles, two in loose speech, the third in strict, none of them without fault, and none unentangled with anachronisms. In those Acts Giles is said to have been born of royal stock, to have come from Greece into the Province of Gaul to Caesarius, bishop of Arles, of good memory, and, the Rhône being crossed, to have joined himself to Veredemius the hermit, and then to have penetrated into a more secret place, where, when he was fed with the milk of a hind, he is reported to have been discovered by the huntsmen of Flavius, king of the Goths, and to have been the author to Flavius of founding a monastery, which afterwards, called St. Giles's, was turned over to seculars. He is also read to have been summoned to Orléans by the command of Charles, king of France. The age of Caesarius, bishop of Arles, does not agree with the principate of Charles Martel, which Charles was the first of this name to hold the scepter of the Franks. Then the building of a monastery is a thing alien from Amalaric, the most savage king of the Visigoths, and from his Arian successors. If anyone should say that there was another Caesarius, bishop of Arles, contemporary with Charles Martel, not even thus will the difficulty be explained; since after Amalaric all the kings of the Visigoths dwelt in Spain, one only excepted, Liuva, who, content with the kingdom of Narbonnese Gaul, reigned at Narbonne for three years, as the most distinguished man Hadrianus Valesius noted in Frankish Affairs, book VII, page CCCLVII.

[25] The same Mabillon in tome 1 of the Annals, page 99, inquires and involve so many difficulties, whether Giles the abbot, who in the year 514 was sent to Rome with Messianus the notary by St. Caesarius, is the same as the holy Giles of whom we treat; and on that occasion he renews and increases the difficulties occurring in these Acts. It is worth weaving in his words, that the studious reader may at the same time understand how various are the controversies arising from these difficulties, which we shall endeavor to sift the more diligently because we find some of them decided by various writers without sufficient examination or suitable foundation: But whether, he says, the Giles sent to Rome by Caesarius is the same as that Greek and holy abbot Giles, who built a monastery in Septimania near Nîmes in the Flavian valley, afterwards named from his name, the matter is not so clear. He indeed in all his Acts, both published and unpublished, is said to have come from Greece, whence he was sprung of royal stock, his means being distributed to the poor, into Gaul to Caesarius, bishop of Arles: but when he is afterwards reported to have been summoned to Orléans by Charles, king of the Franks, if you admit the first of these, the other must be rejected, since Caesarius, who alone presided over the church of Arles, precedes by two hundred years Charles Martel, the first prince of the Franks of that name. It will therefore have been the same Giles, the Greek abbot, whom Caesarius sent with Messianus to Pope Symmachus. He, if there be any credit in his published Acts, having crossed the Rhône, joined himself to Veredemius the hermit. Then he penetrated into a more secret place, where, when he was fed with the milk of a hind, he was discovered by the huntsmen of Flavius, king of the Goths, the hind fleeing back to him, and the same afterwards was author to Flavius of founding a monastery, which he himself ruled.

[26] All the kings of the Goths indeed were called Flavii: so that nothing certain can be determined about them: but since all were devoted to the Arian sect, who would think that Amalaric, who in Caesarius's time held Septimania, or any other whatever, thought of founding a monastery? Besides, that monastery must be said to have been founded much later than the time when Giles, the Rhône being crossed, departed from Caesarius; nor was Giles abbot before the monastery was founded. And yet the little book or letter was offered to Pope Symmachus in Caesarius's name by Giles, already abbot, and by Messianus the notary. From these things it is gathered how intricate these Acts are, and of almost no weight, purged indeed of these faults by Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, in the sacred Office which he composed concerning St. Giles, but with almost no historical fact reported, save that he says he was a Greek and came into Gaul. However that be, ancient is the monastery of St. Giles in the Flavian valley, which is named first among the monasteries of Septimania that owed the king prayers only, in the Constitution of the emperor Louis surnamed the Pious concerning the monasteries of the kingdom of the Franks. Thus he discourses doubtfully on either side; and this one thing he pronounces for certain, that the Acts of St. Giles are of almost no weight, and so are not fit for establishing any historical fact. To this censure I willingly subscribe with all the learned,

whom I have seen write on this matter after Mabillon. But not only the anachronisms in those Acts displease me, for they could be reconciled if the Acts had been composed with such weight that one might safely establish on their authority another Caesarius, bishop of Arles: but not a few facts also are reported in them in a manner little verisimilar, and, as it seems, in a disturbed order.

[27] [Yet the Acts are ancient after a fashion, nor do they seem written after the ninth or tenth century.] Further, at what time the writer of those Acts flourished cannot exactly be determined: for nowhere does he hint that he was contemporary with the Saint, nor can it even be proved that he is much distant from his age. Nevertheless from our codices, in which that Life is read, it can be gathered that it was not written after the ninth or certainly the tenth century, since two of them are exceedingly ancient. We have eight copies of that Life, five in our own codices, but three transcripts sent from elsewhere, namely one by our Sirmond, another by Chifflet, the third from a most ancient codex of Cambrai, as is written in the margin. From these copies, which agree sufficiently among themselves, I shall publish the Saint's Acts below, the discrepancies of the Manuscripts being noted where it shall be worth the labor. Now we shall briefly enumerate the controversies which have had their origin from the Acts, that we may illustrate them so far as we can, not from the Acts themselves, which for that end have not sufficient authority; but by inquiring which of the deeds asserted in the Life can be confirmed from elsewhere, and rendered certain or at least probable.

[28] [The dispute about the age of St. Giles, whom the moderns everywhere make contemporary with St. Caesarius of Arles] The chief controversy is about the time in which St. Giles lived. Most writers of the Middle Ages hand down that the Saint lived in Gaul in the eighth century under the principate of Charles Martel, who administered the kingdom of the Franks, not indeed with the royal name, yet with royal authority, from the year 715 until the year 741, in which he died. Certain others referred the age of the holy Abbot to the times of the emperor Charlemagne: but that opinion is improbable, as will be plain. Finally very many writers, and those preeminent in learning, who flourished in these latter centuries, accuse of error all the writers of the preceding centuries who made mention of Giles, and contend that St. Giles was contemporary with St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, a man indeed most celebrated, who, having obtained the episcopate of Arles in the year 502, laid it down with his life in the year 542, as we showed under Caesarius in tome VI of August, page 61. Baronius in his annotations on the Roman Martyrology at the first of September thus sets forth his mind on the age of St. Giles: Sigebert testifies in his Chronicle that he flourished in the year DCCXV; but he errs: for (as appears from his Life) it is established that he lived in the times of Caesarius, bishop of Arles, who flourished in the times of Clovis, king of the Franks, and of Theoderic, king of Italy. Le Cointe in the Annals of the Franks at the year 531 embraces the same opinion, and many others, whose catalogue it is not worth weaving: but some of them will afterwards be named in other controversies which drew their origin from this chief one.

[29] I wonder that this opinion about the age of St. Giles pleased so many learned men, but without suitable foundation: since for it no other reason is brought or can be brought than that in the Acts of St. Giles he is said to have come to Caesarius and to have stayed with him two years. For the same Acts affirm that Giles came to Charles, king of the Franks, who can by no means be put together with that Caesarius. And so in one or the other the writer of the Acts erred, nor has any one hitherto shown why he ought rather to be thought to have erred about Charles than about Caesarius. Yet that ought to have been proved, in order that Giles might be said to be contemporary with Caesarius. Likewise, if one would win credit that Giles lived with Charles, he will have to show why the things said in the Acts about Caesarius ought rather to be judged false than the things said about king Charles. Moreover most writers who will have Giles contemporary with St. Caesarius deservedly accuse those Acts as lacking authority. But if the Acts lack authority fit for proving, those things also which are said in the Acts about St. Caesarius cannot be firmer, unless they were confirmed from elsewhere, which I do not see done. It is plain therefore abundantly on how ruinous a foundation that whole opinion of the more recent writers about the age of St. Giles rests.

[30] Nevertheless from this opinion other consequences have been deduced, hence some deny that the monastery of St. Giles was built by the Saint himself: which it will be worthwhile to explain and then to refute, before we endeavor to establish the Saint's age. Mabillon saw that the monastery of St. Giles is not so ancient that it can be said to have been founded in St. Caesarius's time, and indicated this in the words cited at number 26: That monastery must be said to have been founded much later, insinuating that he doubted whether the monastery was built by Giles himself. That doubt the present writers of Gallia Christiana embrace, tome 6, columns 480 and 481. Further went Baillet at the first of September under Giles, who indeed sets him as an abbot in Occitania, but without a monastery, which he asserts was founded afterwards at his tomb. The same the words of the Paris Martyrology, given by us at number 18, obscurely hint: whose (Giles's) tomb gave its name to the basilica built over it, especially because no mention is made of a monastery built by the Saint. But on the contrary the learned Benedictines who in our times are writing the History of Occitania, tome 1, page 667, acknowledge a monastery built by Giles himself, although they refer his age to the times of Caesarius. Reasons will not be lacking, as I trust, for settling this dispute, and for ascribing the building of the monastery undoubtedly to the Saint, when I shall have set forth the remaining controversies.

[31] From ignorance of the time in which the Saint lived, it is equally unknown [it is doubted who is the Flavius, king of the Goths, recorded in the Acts, and some omit him:] who is that Flavius, king of the Goths, from whom Giles is said to have received a place for founding a monastery. Nay, not a few have wholly passed over that Flavius, and have attributed all that is narrated of Flavius in the Acts to Charles Martel, prince of the Franks. Hear the Office which we recite of St. Giles in the diocese of Antwerp, lesson 6: When.. Charles Martel, ruler of the kingdom of Gaul, after the destructions of the Saracens wrought by him, was engaged in hunting in the wood of Nîmes, and his huntsmen were pursuing with a great force of hounds that hind which used to feed Giles, she fled to the Man of God, the hounds standing still and by frequent baying betokening their dread. For which cause Charles, opening a way with the sword through the thorn-brakes, came upon the holy Old Man in a cave, red with much blood from a wound which the arrow of an incautious javelin-thrower had inflicted on him while he aimed at the hind. From whom, pardon and blessing having been sought, the prince by earnest prayers brought it about that he suffered a monastery to be built in the place of the cave. The same opinion is handed down in many other Offices of particular churches; and Saussay followed the same in the elogium which he inserted concerning St. Giles into the Gallican Martyrology. And so we shall endeavor below to prove that the place was really given to St. Giles by Flavius, king of the Goths.

[32] various opinions about that Flavius: And then we shall inquire who among the kings of the Goths ought more probably to be called that Flavius the founder of the monastery. For Mabillon suggests Amalaric, but doubtfully. But Le Cointe at the year 531, number 10: For the rest, he says, we judge Amalaric to be none other than that king of the Goths into whose sight Giles came. Baillet under Giles assigns Amalaric or Theudis, king of the Visigoths. From these the writers of the History of Occitania, praised before, dissent, who substitute Theoderic, king of Italy. But we shall show below that none of all these is assigned with a probable reason, and that one must have recourse to those times in which the kings of the Visigoths were Catholic.

[33] some confound with St. Giles the Giles whom St. Caesarius sent to Rome. At length, from the opinion which has now become as it were common about the age of St. Giles, modern writers have concluded that St. Giles is the same as that abbot Giles whom in the year 514 St. Caesarius sent to Rome to offer, with Messianus the notary, a little book to Pope Symmachus. Mabillon did not doubt of that matter when he published the Ancient Analecta, as may be seen in tome 3 of the Analecta, page 433. But afterwards, when he was writing the Annals of his Order, he saw and set forth the difficulties of that opinion in the words recited at numbers 25 and 26, by which he abundantly declared his doubt. Nevertheless the present writers of the History of Occitania, tome 1, page 666, still believe that that Giles, Caesarius's legate, is none other than the Giles of whom we dispute, and most others assert the same opinion, certainly as the more probable. Wherefore, since I cannot agree with them, I shall endeavor to refute that opinion also, before I set about establishing the age of St. Giles. The studious reader will pardon me if perchance I seem here too prolix: the authority of the learned, whose opinion I am compelled to abandon, makes it inexpedient to dispatch the matter in a few words.

§ IV. Some things are premised concerning the abbey of St. Giles; then the controversies just proposed are decided.

[ ] The place is set forth in which the monastery of St. Giles was founded, The place in which was founded the monastery which we shall assert to be St. Giles's is known from a not ignoble town, which grew up little by little about the monastery, and has kept the name of St. Giles until now, called in Latin Fanum S. Ægidii, in French Saint Gilles. Further, Saint-Gilles is situated almost in the farthest corner of Occitania, only one mile from the Rhône, where it is divided into various mouths, that it may run down a little lower into the sea. The place was before called the Flavian Valley, which name it verisimilarly received from the Visigothic kings, to whom the forename Flavius was long common. Hence the monastery of St. Giles was named at the beginning St. Peter's in the Flavian Valley, but afterwards St. Giles's likewise in the Flavian Valley. Catel also testifies in the History of the Counts of Toulouse, page 5, that he had seen ancient monuments of the abbey of St. Giles, in which the wood of the said monastery is called La selva Gotesca, that is, the Gothic wood. The same writer judges that the palace of the Goths was there; and this very thing many others affirm, along with the writers of the History of Occitania, tome 1, page 257, who judge that that palace was built by the Gothic kings, that they might more conveniently engage in hunting in the neighboring wood. These latter things about the palace of the Goths rest on the authority of Godfrey of Viterbo and of Otto of Freising, whose words they adduce. Let these things about the place suffice. But now it will be worthwhile to weave in a few things about the varying fortune of the monastery, that from thence also light may shine upon our discussion.

[35] The monastery is situated in the diocese of Nîmes, and from the beginning was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, [which was exempt from the bishop's jurisdiction, but not always in the same manner.] as we shall clearly see. Nevertheless the bishops of Nîmes at various times received jurisdiction over the abbey, and thereafter claimed too much for themselves, so that they often had to be restrained by the supreme Pontiffs. Among the documents after tome 6 of Gallia Christiana, column 165, there is read

a diploma of the emperor Louis the Pious, by which he grants all his right in the cell which is called the Flavian Valley, which is built in honor of St. Peter, prince of the Apostles, to Christian, bishop of Nîmes. Something also was granted to Isnardus, Christian's successor in the episcopate, by Pope Nicholas himself, as is gathered from what is recited in tome 2 of the often-praised History of Occitania, among the proofs, column 10. For there are enumerated there several bishops of Nîmes, and among them Isnardus, to whom Pope Nicholas granted the aforesaid monasteries, that is, the abbey of St. Giles and that of Tornac, which the writer had just named. Hence arose a controversy between Gilbert, bishop of Nîmes, and Leo, abbot of St. Giles, before the supreme Pontiff John VIII, who in the year 878 had come into Gaul, and was staying some time at Arles. The muniments of the abbey were exhibited to the Pontiff, bishops and several noble men were chosen to judge the suit, and at length the cause was adjudged to the abbot, as may more fully be seen in the Deeds of John VIII, which Baluze published in tome 7 of the Miscellanea, page 349, and which are held among us in the manuscript Collection on the Pontiffs, from which Papebroch gave the same in the Propylaeum of May, part 1 of the chronico-historical Attempt, page 140. Yet the bishop did not long acquiesce in this judgment. For this cause the Pontiff wrote his letter 191 to Rostagnus, archbishop of Arles, Sigebodus, archbishop of Narbonne, and Robert, archbishop of Aix, whom he orders seriously to admonish the bishop of Nîmes to keep himself within his duty, and to excommunicate him if he refuse to do it. This letter is printed in Labbe, tome 9 of the Councils, column 124. So in the year 1074 Gregory VII rebuked Froterius II, bishop of Nîmes, because he arrogated to himself too much authority over the abbey of St. Giles. The letter Labbe exhibits in tome 10, column 55. Many other vicissitudes of the same monastery may be seen in the catalogue of the abbots in tome 6 of Gallia Christiana, from column 482; for they pertain less to our purpose.

[36] These things being set forth, I subjoin the reasons which do not permit me to doubt that the aforesaid monastery was erected by St. Giles himself. From various monuments it is proved that that monastery In the Deeds of John VIII already assigned this is first read: For the monastery of St. Peter, in which rests the body of B. Giles, in the borders of Gothia in the Flavian valley, which valley king Flavius formerly gave to B. Giles, and St. Giles thereupon made an entire donation of it to the Roman Church and to the lord Pope Benedict , and had there built a monastery in veneration of the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul &c. Then, the attempt of bishop Gilbert to claim jurisdiction over the monastery being reported, he subjoins: But when the lord Pope John sought the muniments of the charters of the same monastery, the privilege which the venerable Pope Benedict had bodily delivered at Rome * to St. Giles was offered to him. These things are so clear that they leave no doubt, since the Saint is asserted not only to have built that monastery, but also to have received the privilege of exemption bodily from the Pontiff himself. Nay, not even bishop Gilbert denied it, but, as follows, he wished to defend himself by those things which he had obtained from Pope Nicholas and from a certain king of the Franks, whose precepts he brought forward. But the bishops and other judges, being ordered under the anathema of excommunication to judge rightly, adjudged the monastery to the Pontiff, and pronounced against the bishop.

[37] was built by the Saint himself, and made subject to the supreme Pontiff: Further, these Deeds of John VIII were written by an author verisimilarly contemporary, in Papebroch's judgment also: nor is there reason why we should doubt the credit of that monument. And John VIII looks back to the aforesaid judgment in the letter written in the following year to the archbishops of Arles, Narbonne, and Aix, which we assigned above, when he says: We have learned by the report of truthful men that Gilbert, venerable bishop of Nîmes, has rashly invaded a certain monastery of ours, which we acquired over that same bishop (by the judgment of the preceding year already reported) &c. Moreover, that the aforesaid monastery was not founded after the times of St. Giles, Gregory VII again clearly testifies in the letter already praised to Froterius II, bishop of Nîmes, to whom he writes this: We have heard … that thou hast against justice so far afflicted with injuries the monastery of St. Giles, which that same glorious Confessor handed over to the right of blessed Peter &c. With Gregory agrees Urban II in a bull of the year 1096, by which he confirms the cession of Raymond, count of Toulouse, who had abdicated whatever justly or unjustly he held in the villa of St. Giles. For the Pontiff there subjoins these words: After these things it came to pass by the disposition of the divine will that at the monastery of B. Giles we dedicated with our own hands to almighty God the altar of the new basilica. We have therefore sanctioned and do sanction, and consign in writing to the memory of posterity, that no archbishop or bishop henceforth dare to pronounce against that same church a sentence of excommunication or of interdict, to the end that the same monastery, subject by its own right to the holy Roman Church by the very handing over of B. Giles, may ever enjoy the favor of Roman liberty. You will find the whole bull in tome 2 of the reprinted Spicilegium, page 630. The same Paschal II affirms in the letters partly recited at number 8, where this is read: To which (the apostolic See) your monastery of the Flavian valley is acknowledged to have been given as a stipend by that same St. Giles. These things abundantly assert the building of his monastery to St. Giles. And so I proceed to the second controversy, in which it is disputed about the king from whom the Saint received the place.

[38] The Acts testify that the place was given to St. Giles by Flavius, king of the Goths. [Flavius, king of the Goths, gave the place, not Charles Martel, who perhaps restored the monastery:] With the Acts agree the Deeds of John VIII, just praised, in these words: Which valley king Flavius formerly gave to B. Giles. Flavius was the name of the kings of the Goths, not of the kings of the Franks. A king of the Goths therefore gave the valley to Giles. Nor do the learned now seem to doubt of that matter; nor can any doubt arise for me, since the Goths ruled in that part of Occitania at the time in which we shall show that the monastery was built. One thing could be objected from Gallia Christiana, tome 6, column 482, where the first abbot after St. Giles is recorded in this manner: Atticus is said by our Stephanotius, praising a Manuscript codex of St. Giles's, but a more recent one, to have sat in the eighth century, being set over it by Charles Martel, the founder of the monastery. I answer that the monastery was perhaps restored by Charles Martel, and that therefore he could have been called the founder, even if he neither gave the place for founding the first monastery nor bore the expense. This conjecture seems probable enough, because the monastery of St. Giles was verisimilarly overthrown by the Saracens about the year 720, while they occupied all Septimania and cast down the sacred places in a pitiable manner, as the present writers of the History of Occitania report in tome 1, page 390 and following. Certainly in the Acts it is reported that the Saint foretold that his monastery would shortly be overthrown; nor do I see why we should believe this false. Hear an ancient Chronicle in André du Chesne, tome 3, page 349, concerning the ravages of the Saracens, who are called Vandals, at that time in Gaul: At which time, he says, churches were destroyed, monasteries overthrown, cities taken, houses desolated, castles pulled down, innumerable slaughters of men made, and much blood of the human race everywhere shed.

[39] But whatever be the case about the restoration of the monastery by Charles, [that Flavius was not any of the kings of the Visigoths about the times of St. Caesarius,] no doubt seems to remain that the first foundation is owed to a certain Flavius, king of the Goths, as with the Acts the Deeds of John VIII testify, which in this matter merit far greater credit than that more recent manuscript codex. It remains therefore that we inquire to what king of the Goths that foundation can more probably be attributed. First, all the kings of the Visigoths must be rejected who lived about the times of St. Caesarius, or before the middle of the sixth century, whom some named for no other cause than that they thought St. Giles lived at that time. The first reason for rejecting them is their heresy; for they were most devoted to the Arian sect. Who then would believe a monastery founded by their liberality for Catholic monks? Who, I say, can judge this, unless he be altogether constrained by irrefragable authority? But no authority is here adduced which asserts it; no reason which persuades it. The second reason is the forename Flavius, which suits none of the said kings. In this matter very many learned men have erred, because they did not observe from what time the name Flavius became common to the Visigothic kings. Further, that the name of Flavius was first assumed by Reccared, who reigned about the end of the sixth century, the writers of the History of Occitania rightly observed in tome 1, page 643, after Hadrianus Valesius. Let us hear the latter in book 14 of Frankish Affairs, page 351, where with some indignation he writes this of Reccared: This is Reccared, who, puffed up with Spanish vanity and boasting, I believe, lest he should seem to yield to Authari, king of the Lombards, whom then his own men, as the Greeks the emperor, called Flavius, was the first of the kings of the Goths (rather, of the Visigoths) to usurp the forename Flavius.

[40] nor Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, Led by this reason, the writers of the History of Occitania substitute for the Visigothic kings Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, whom they prove on page 643 to have used the name of Flavius also, and whom they say on page 666 was this very Flavius. But their whole reasoning rests on this foundation, that they believe St. Giles to be the same whom in the year 514 St. Caesarius sent to Rome. First they affirm that Theoderic held the kingdom of the Visigoths from the year 508 until the year 526, namely in the name of Amalaric, whose guardian he was, not in his own name: And yet, they say, in the year DXIV that Saint was already an abbot, that is, a father of monks according to the manner of speaking of the sixth century; the monastery therefore must have been founded in that very year 514. Then from these they further infer that it could have been founded neither by Amalaric nor by Theudis, who did not reign except after the year 526. But hence it can in no way be concluded that the monastery of St. Giles was founded by Theoderic, unless it be first proved that St. Giles is really the same as that Giles who in the year 514 was already an abbot. Nothing therefore of proof is brought forward, save that very thing which is chiefly in question, and which we shall presently prove to be false. Now I shall show that Theoderic cannot be assigned. Hear first a few words from those of Mabillon cited at number 26: Besides, he says, that monastery must be said to have been founded much later than Giles departed … from Caesarius. He does not indeed allege the reasons for that assertion; but the learned man without doubt saw that all the monuments resist so great an antiquity as he would otherwise gladly have given the monastery, since he inclined to that same opinion by which St. Giles is believed to be the same as the Giles of Caesarius. Then the writers of Gallia Christiana in tome 6 from column 482 weave

a catalogue of the abbots of St. Giles; but they found none older than Charles Martel, or than the eighth century, except the Saint himself, about whose age it is disputed. But indeed it would be most to be wondered at, in the case of a monastery so celebrated that it gave origin to a town, if it were two hundred years older than Charles Martel. This argument, which is strengthened by the silence of all the writers of the sixth and seventh centuries, has seemed to some of such weight that they preferred to adjudge away from St. Giles the building of the monastery, rather than to believe that it was built from the time of St. Caesarius.

[41] as is clearly shown: Moreover the monastery of St. Giles was founded about the times of a certain Pontiff Benedict, to whom the Saint himself both offered the place, and from whom he obtained a privilege of exemption. This the Deeds of John VIII, already praised at number 36, testify in these words: Which valley king Flavius formerly gave to B. Giles, and St. Giles thereupon made an entire donation of it to the Roman Church and to the lord Pope Benedict, and had there built a monastery in veneration of the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Again lower down: But when the lord Pope John sought the muniments of the charters of the same monastery, the privilege which the venerable Pope Benedict had bodily delivered at Rome to St. Giles was offered to him. These things utterly overthrow the opinion about Theoderic, since Benedict I did not obtain the pontificate before the year 573 or 574, as Pagi will have it. In no way therefore can it be believed that the monastery of St. Giles was founded by Theoderic before the year 514. Finally, even if we had not such firm arguments that the monastery was built later, not even so would the matter about Theoderic be verisimilar. For he himself was an Arian and had never seen Giles, since he was not in Gaul. Besides, he waged perpetual wars with the Franks in Provence and Septimania, which he did not even possess in his own name. All these things the praised writers of the History of Occitania confess, against whom we here discourse. Who then would believe an Arian king to have been so liberal to a Catholic Hermit whom he had never seen, as to grant him from another's possession a place for founding a monastery, and that in a province which resounded with the continual tumults of wars?

[42] From these things I conclude that that Flavius is not to be sought in the sixth century, that Flavius seems to have been Wamba or Ervig, king of the Visigoths; since the Visigothic kings took that name after the times of Pope Benedict I, and so that Flavius lived about the times of Benedict II, whom some will have created Pontiff in the year 683, but others in the year 684 or even 685. The name of Flavius was then confirmed by long use, and used by many kings who had held Septimania in an unbroken series, so that the Flavian valley seems to have drawn its name from them, and to signify the same as the royal valley, or the valley of the kings of the Goths. Further, in the time of Benedict II the kingdom of the Goths in Spain and in that part of Gaul of which we treat was held by Flavius Ervig from the year 680, in which Flavius Wamba had abdicated the kingdom. Hence it can be doubted which of these two was the founder of the monastery. For from the Deeds of John VIII it is only established that the place was offered to Benedict by Giles himself; but from them it cannot certainly be gathered how many years before that offering the monastery was built; nay, not even from them is it clear whether the building preceded the offering of the place, or the latter the former. But if we consider the Acts of St. Giles, the monastery was built first, and some years later offered to the Roman Pontiff. But in those Acts all things are confused, and so from them the matter cannot be determined.

[43] There occur, however, probable reasons from which we can conjecture but the thing becomes more verisimilar about Wamba. that Wamba rather than Ervig gave the place to Giles. First it is established that Wamba was kindly toward religious men and preeminent in piety, and that other monasteries were founded by him: all which things are less known of Ervig. Secondly, if we believe the Acts, Flavius himself found St. Giles, and this is verisimilar from his extraordinary liberality toward him. Now we know that Wamba in the year 673, as most hand down, was at Nîmes, where he subdued Paul, who was rebelling and usurping the royal name. Whether Ervig too was ever in Septimania is unknown. Moreover it is verisimilar that the privilege of exemption was not obtained by Giles until after the monastery was already flourishing both in right laws and in the number of its monks. But he obtained that privilege from Benedict about the year 684. It is credible therefore that the building of the monastery fell in Wamba's reign, and preceded by nearly ten years the Saint's journey to Rome, especially since Wamba was then in that place where he could have known Giles and given him a place for founding a monastery. I judge it more probable therefore that Wamba was that Flavius, and that the thing happened in the year 673 on the occasion just mentioned. For the rest, of Wamba's war in Septimania the writers of the History of Spain treat, and the very recent writers of the History of Occitania at the year 673, and we shall below more clearly assign the occasion on which at the time of that war Wamba could have found Giles.

[44] St. Giles is other than the abbot Giles whom St. Caesarius sent to Rome. We proceed at length to the controversy last proposed, concerning that abbot Giles whom St. Caesarius in the year 514 sent to Rome. From what has been said of the monastery of St. Giles founded by the Saint himself, and of Flavius, king of the Goths, who gave the place about the years 673 or 680, it most clearly follows that that abbot, Caesarius's legate, has nothing in common with St. Giles. The same will be made manifest from the age of St. Giles presently to be established. In this place therefore I shall only show briefly that it is not even in itself credible that St. Giles was sent by St. Caesarius as legate to Rome. First, St. Giles, as is everywhere believed, was a Greek by nation and a lover of solitude, and is said to have stayed at Arles only two years, so that he could neither have been skilled in the Latin tongue nor have known well enough the rights of the church of Arles. When he had been made abbot, he belonged to the diocese of Nîmes, not to that of Arles. It is not credible therefore that St. Caesarius, for that Roman legation by which he was busy to defend before the Pontiff the rights of his church, would have chosen our holy Abbot, both on account of his unskillfulness in the tongue used at Rome, and on account of his ignorance of the privileges which were to be defended, and also because he was of another diocese. And these same reasons, joined with his love of solitude and the care of his new monastery, would have deterred the Saint from undertaking such an office. These foundations being laid, we shall endeavor to elucidate the chief controversy about the age of St. Giles.

* the word "Benedicto" is here omitted in Baluze.

* Baluze, munimenta

* the same, Romanus

§ V. It is inquired at what time the Saint flourished, and such a chronology of his life as is possible is woven.

[ ] [The writers of the Middle Ages everywhere refer the age of St. Giles to Charles Martel;] Although we have already now adduced arguments which abundantly show that the age of St. Giles cannot be referred to St. Caesarius, the most celebrated bishop of Arles in the sixth century, and so it may seem less necessary to dispute further on that matter, yet because very many writers, and those most weighty, have gone off into that opinion, I shall here inquire again with other arguments into the age of St. Giles, whereby it will come to pass that the former are confirmed by these, and these in turn receive strength from the former. In the first place, all the writers of the Middle Ages who made mention of St. Giles referred this Saint to the eighth century, in which they write that he became known in Gaul; and those who among the praised writers are the more accurate and the more ancient commemorate Giles about the beginning of the principate of Charles Martel, or the year 715. Receive their words.

[46] or after the beginning of the eighth century; In the Chronicle of Saint-Denis, which was written in the ancient tongue of the Franks and so lately published by Martin Bouquet in tome 3 of the Writers of Gallic Affairs, among the incidental matters in the time of Pippin of Herstal, who preceded Charles Martel, this is read on page 308: At this time holy Giles came from the parts of Greece into the land of Gothia, which is now called Provence: there he lived, and brought forth the fruits of good works, as is held in his Life. Sigebert of Gembloux in his Chronicle at the year 715 writes this of him: St. Giles, coming from Greece, shines in sanctity in Provence. The short Chronicle of Elnon in Martène, tome 3 of the Anecdota, column [ ], at the year 714 thus has it: St. Giles, coming from Greece, shines in Provence. The same time Vincent of Beauvais assigns in the Historical Mirror, book 23, chapter 139, when he says that the emperor Anastasius was created in the year 715 (which others more rightly will have done in the year 713) and adds: In his first year holy Giles, coming from Greece, shone in sanctity in Provence. With these almost agrees Jean d'Ypres in the Chronicle of Saint-Bertin, in Martène just praised, tome 3 of the Anecdota, column 479, referring the same Saint to the beginning of the principate of Charles Martel, and recording him in these words: Holy Giles also came from Greece into Provence.

[47] The anonymous author of the Chronicle of Tours in the same Martène, tome 5 of the most ample Collection, column 948, transferred our Saint to the reign of Pippin, [some some years earlier or later: a certain anonymous writer records another Giles under Charlemagne,] and one year after Pippin's coronation, which he had reported, thus briefly records him: Holy Giles shines in Provence. On the contrary St. Antoninus, in part 2 of the Histories, title 13, chapter 6, §33, thinks that he flourished earlier, in these words: And he (St. Giles) flourished about the year of the Lord DCC. Werner Rolewinck in the Fasciculus of times, in Pistorius, tome 2, folio 62, places Giles between the years 704 and 714, and praises him in these words: Giles, a most holy abbot, is held illustrious, who came from Greece into Gaul. An anonymous writer in the chronological Compilation, in the same Pistorius, tome 1, page 727, refers the Saint to the pontificate of Gregory II, who obtained it in the year 714 or 715, as Pagi will have it. Receive his words: At that time under this Pope Gregory (II) blessed Giles the abbot flourished. The same author commemorates another Giles, whether real or fictitious, under Charlemagne, whom he makes Charles's confessor and sets his death in the year 815, reporting some deed of him which in the Acts is narrated of our Saint. Hear his very words: Holy Giles the abbot, confessor of Charles, migrated to Christ. To this holy Giles God revealed a certain hidden sin which Charles blushed to confess: which being made manifest to him, presently Charles, having confessed, worthily repented of that enormous excess. Verisimilarly that compiler made two Gileses out of one, both abbots and saints, because he found him commemorated by some under Charles Martel and by others under Charlemagne.

[48] The author of the great Belgian Chronicle in Pistorius, tome 3, page 43, also

thought that our Saint must be referred to the times of Charlemagne. under whom others thought our Saint lived, whose opinion is refuted: There are others also who wrote the same. Wherefore I shall refute this error in a few words. Neither Flavius, king of the Goths, who gave the place to Giles, nor Pope Benedict, to whom Giles offered the monastery, can be put together with Charlemagne. For the Goths in the time of Charles Martel were driven out of Septimania by the Saracens, nor did they thereafter obtain its dominion: nor is any Pope Benedict found about the times of Charlemagne before the year 855, in which Benedict III was elected, that is, forty-one years after the death of Charlemagne. Then Louis the Pious, in the diploma of the year 814, already assigned at number 35, by which he grants to Christian, bishop of Nîmes, the monastery of St. Peter in the Flavian valley, declares that not only Charles but his predecessors also, the kings, had always held that monastery, for the love of God and the tranquillity of the brethren, under fullest protection and defense of immunity. The monastery therefore, or the little cell, as it is there called, had stood under the predecessors of Charlemagne, namely Pippin and Charles Martel. Finally, in the Constitution of Louis the Pious concerning the monasteries of Gaul, which Labbe published in tome 7 of the Councils, column [ ], that monastery is set first among the monasteries of Septimania, and is called the monastery of St. Giles in the Flavian valley. From which it is gathered that the monastery was then already sufficiently ancient, because at the beginning it had borne the name of St. Peter, and had already received another name from its holy Founder, and among various ones was named in the first place. And so it is certain that St. Giles flourished before the times of Charlemagne.

[49] The first reason by which it is proved that the Saint lived with Charles Martel, But from this error of a few men, who are of almost no name, one would not rightly conclude that the authority of those also is of slight moment who referred the age of St. Giles to the principate of Charles Martel. For these are not only more in number; but some of them are of a better stamp, so that their united authority seems neither to be despised nor to be abandoned without a grave reason. I confess indeed that individually they have often gone astray by some years from the true chronology. But it is by no means credible that all of them were so deceived as to have feigned a most celebrated Abbot two hundred years younger than he really was; especially since no one is known to have contradicted them at a time when suitable monuments do not seem to have been lacking to the monastery of St. Giles, from which the age of the Saint and of his abbey could have been shown, and a greater one proved, if their antiquity had really been greater. The authority therefore of these writers would be far to be preferred to the Acts of St. Giles, even if the Acts favored the contrary opinion. But the Acts favor our adversaries no more, when they bring in St. Caesarius, than they favor us, when they name king Charles. The first reason therefore for setting St. Giles about the principate of Charles Martel is the authority of the praised writers.

[50] the second, by which it is shown that he did not live with St. Caesarius; The second reason, which from the beginning rendered the moderns' opinion suspect to me, is the deep silence of all the writers of the sixth and seventh centuries both about St. Giles and about his most celebrated monastery. For it is established that the holy Abbot shone with many miracles after his death. It is established that his church became famous for such frequent pilgrimages that the place, before a desert, at length grew into a town. Nevertheless neither St. Gregory of Tours, who left scarcely any Saint of his time in Gaul celebrated for miracles unmentioned, nor any other writer of the sixth or seventh century commemorated a word about St. Giles. Then no word can be adduced from any of the councils, from the diplomas of princes, from the letters of bishops or Pontiffs, or from any other monuments whatever, by which either mention is made of the monastery of St. Giles, or it can be proved that it existed before the seventh century was running to its close. Finally, the authors of Gallia Christiana, as we have already warned, with all their diligence found no abbot of that monastery older than the eighth century, except St. Giles. Whence this silence of all writers and monuments about St. Giles, unless because he could not be commemorated before he lived?

[51] other reasons by which the aforesaid are confirmed. If to these reasons we add what we proved before, I do not see that any doubt remains that the age of St. Giles is far to be removed from the age of St. Caesarius, and drawn back to the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth. First, from the Deeds of John VIII we showed that a monastery was built by St. Giles himself in the Flavian valley, and that it was built on a place given by king Flavius, and at length offered by the Saint himself to Pope Benedict, and we gave the letters of other Pontiffs by which that offering of the monastery and the exemption obtained from the Pontiff through St. Giles are solidly confirmed. And so it seems certain enough that the monastery was built, and so that St. Giles lived, in the time of a certain Flavius reigning in Septimania and of a Pope Benedict. We showed, secondly, that no Flavius reigned in Septimania in the time of any Pontiff Benedict, or even for many years before Benedict's pontificate, except about and before the pontificate of Benedict II, at which time there reigned there Flavius Wamba and Flavius Ervig, both Catholics, both sufficiently kindly toward ecclesiastics and monks. Hence therefore it may be permitted to conclude that the building of the monastery verisimilarly happened between the year 672, in which Wamba began to reign, and the pontificate of Benedict II, which he obtained about the year 684. No epoch of the life of St. Giles seems more certain than this; and this we shall easily reconcile with the writers alleged above, who connect the life of Giles with the principate of Charles Martel, or with the beginning of the eighth century. Receive therefore such a chronology of the life of Giles as is possible from the foundations already laid: for an exact one we cannot give, since neither is the year of the Saint's death established, nor the number of the years of his whole life, although there seems no doubt that he reached a great age.

[52] Let us conjecture that Giles was given to the world in Greece about the year 640, Such a chronology as is possible that he crossed the sea when he was about twenty-five years old, and came into Provence about the year 665 or 666, lived at Arles and in other places nearly two years, and thence with Veredemius the hermit lived in solitude near the river Gardon until the year 670 or 671. Then he went to a more solitary place, and there lived until the year 673, in which he could have been found by king Wamba in the month of August, while he, Maguelonne being taken and part of his column sent forward to besiege Nîmes, was halting with the remaining part of his army between Maguelonne and Nîmes, perhaps about the place in which the Saint was found; or even in the month of September, after he had taken Nîmes. For Wamba, when he had taken Maguelonne, sent part of the army to Nîmes, and with the other part himself afterwards followed, as Rodrigo of Toledo teaches in the History of Wamba's expedition, which André du Chesne published in tome 1 of the Writers of the History of the Franks from page 821. Nay, there can even be a suspicion that it is our Giles to whom Rodrigo reports on page 829 that a certain vision was then presented, in these words: Where the divine protection was shown by the display of an evident sign. For it seemed, as is reported, to a certain man of a foreign nation that the army of the religious prince (Wamba) was protected by the watches of angels, and that those angels by flying over the camp of that army portended the signs of their protection. This vision, I say, can excellently be understood of St. Giles, who both was of a foreign nation, and at that time seems to have been near the place which Wamba's army was passing. Yet from a conjecture of this kind nothing can safely be asserted.

[53] But, whatever be the case about this vision, it seems probable of the life of St. Giles that Giles was found on that occasion, since the Acts teach that he was found, and no one contradicts the Acts in that matter. Hence we set the beginning of the building of the monastery in the year 673 or 674. And the monastery, rightly established with laws and little by little filled with a number of monks, we believe was offered to Benedict II about the year 684. At the same time he obtained the privilege of exemption for his monastery; and the Pontiff is said to have given him two cypress doors, of which the leaves of the church were composed. Then the holy Abbot ruled and without doubt enlarged the monastery, and foretold its destruction, if we believe the Acts. We suspect that it was destroyed by the Saracens about the year 720, and that the Saint prolonged his life to those times, so that verisimilarly he was of decrepit age, and then numbered about eighty years, if he was born about the year 640, as we said before from conjecture, to which nevertheless we would have added so much latitude that we should not refuse to add ten years, if that should appear to anyone more verisimilar.

[54] is woven: Further, about the same time we think our Saint was summoned to Orléans by Charles Martel. Certainly Charles, after he had conquered for the third time Chilperic, king of Neustria and Burgundy, came to Orléans in the year 719, as may be seen in Pagi at the same year, number 10, and in other writers. In the same year 719 also Zama, governor of the Saracens in Spain, entered Septimania with a huge army, and subjugated it partly in that and partly in the following year; as the writers of the History of Occitania narrate in tome 1, page 390. Hence it is verisimilar that St. Giles with his monks, either in the year 719 or 720, fled for fear of the Saracens into the Gaul subject to the Franks, and on that occasion was summoned to Orléans by Charles, to whom the fame of his sanctity had been carried. That flight of St. Giles is verisimilar not only from the cruelty of the Saracens, but also from the example of the monks of St. Baudilius, who with their abbot St. Romulus at those times fled from Nîmes into Burgundy, as the writers just praised report on page 393. Further, if we give credit to the Acts, the holy Abbot after his meeting with Charles returned to his abbey. That could really have happened in the year 721 or 722, when the Saracens, having suffered a huge slaughter near Toulouse from Eudo, duke of Aquitaine, had again lost a great part of Septimania. But if the matter be so, St. Giles verisimilarly died before the second irruption of the Saracens, by which in the year 725 they occupied all Septimania. However it be, it is not verisimilar that the Saint lived many years after his meeting with Charles, and therefore I have from conjecture marked his death between the years 720 and 725.

[55] in which several heads appear certain enough, Now I think the reader should be briefly warned which of the things discussed seem more certain, and which less certain. First, I should not think it to be doubted that St. Giles lived long after St. Caesarius of Arles, or the sixth century. Secondly, I judge that I have sufficiently shown from unsuspected monuments that the monastery of St. Giles was founded by the Saint himself, and that this was done by the liberality of a certain Flavius, king of the Goths, before or about the pontificate of Benedict II, or the year 684. Thirdly, we have prolonged the Saint's life to the principate of Charles Martel on the authority of writers, from whom one must not recede without a grave reason,

which does not here occur for repudiating their authority. Fourthly, we have proved by certain arguments that the Saint lived, and that his monastery was built, before the times of Charlemagne.

[56] other things have been added from conjectures: All the rest which I inserted into the chronological order, partly to explain certain things asserted in the Acts and to show that they are not improbable, partly that the more certain things might be elucidated by probable conjectures, I myself judge less certain, and by no means wish to be held for certain. Such are St. Giles's coming to Charles Martel, his prediction concerning the overthrow of his monastery, and the very destruction and restoration of the monastery. Conjectures only also are the things which we brought forward about Wamba as the founder of the monastery rather than Ervig, and about the year 673 or the following. For the building of the monastery could have happened in other years also, on an occasion unknown to us, and the place could also have been given by Ervig, nay, by another king before Wamba. Equally uncertain is the year of the Saint's birth and of his death, and it is set from mere conjecture, since the Saint could have survived still long after the year 720, and have died at ninety or a hundred years of age. Let this serve to separate the certain from the uncertain.

[57] Finally I answer to that which alone I see can be objected. the writers alleged before are reconciled with the other monuments. Someone may say that Sigebert, the authors of the Chronicles of Saint-Denis and of Elnon, and the other writers praised by me, so refer the age of St. Giles to the times of Charles Martel, or to the beginning of the eighth century, that they seem to say that he came at that time from Greece into Provence, so that those writers are opposed to what we have said about the monastery of St. Giles founded about the pontificate of Benedict II, or before the year 684. I readily confess that that seems to be the opinion of those writers, certainly at first sight. But a weightier authority stands in the way, whereby it comes about that we could not agree with them if they so thought altogether; and their words can without difficulty be set forth in another sense. For the first thing which they assert is that St. Giles came from Greece: the second, that about the year 715 he shone in sanctity in Provence. By no means, I judge, did they mean to report in what year the Saint landed in Provence, since they verisimilarly did not know it. But they only indicated the year or time at which they found that he lived in Provence and shone in sanctity. St. Giles seems to have become known to those writers chiefly by his coming to Charles Martel, or by the latter's favor toward the Saint himself or his monastery. And this may have been the reason why they referred Giles chiefly to his times.

§ VI. Some things asserted of the Saint, partly in the Life and partly by other writers, are examined.

[ ] We do not admit a Caesarius II, bishop of Arles, From the things which we have discussed one might doubt whether there was not some second Caesarius of Arles, with whom St. Giles stayed two years, as is said in the Acts. For thus no anachronism could be shown in the Life of St. Giles. This was formerly the opinion of not a few, as we insinuated before. André du Saussay in the Appendix of his Martyrology, page 1220, not only asserts a second Caesarius, but also weaves an ample elogium for him, in which he says that from a monk of Lérins and disciple of St. Porcharius the martyr he succeeded bishop Felix, who sat about the year 679, in the see of Arles, and of St. Giles's coming to him he speaks thus: He received with fatherly affection St. Giles coming to him from Greece, carefully instructed him, and, when he had been excellently formed in monastic disciplines, raised him to the summit of a most perfect life. But both what precedes and what he adds about homilies written have been transferred from St. Caesarius, who lived in the sixth century and was a disciple of Porcharius I, abbot of Lérins, to a second Caesarius; and what is said about the reception of St. Giles has been added from his Acts. Wherefore, since nowhere in suitable monuments, nor in the catalogues of the bishops of Arles, is any mention made of a second Caesarius, we judge him wholly fictitious.

[59] [although he has been asserted by many, but we believe that it happened by error that St. Caesarius was inserted into the Acts.] I know indeed that Vincent of Beauvais, Peter de Natalibus, Jacobus de Voragine, Johannes Trithemius, and other writers of the same stamp connected St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, with St. Giles, whom with us they say flourished about the beginning of the eighth century. But they were without doubt led into that error from the Acts of St. Giles, or from others who had copied the Acts, so that their authority, which in ancient matters is of slight moment, cannot here suffice for admitting some second Caesarius. It is necessary therefore to repudiate all those things which are read in the Acts about the deeds of Giles with Caesarius, since they are contrary to what we have proved about Giles not only from better monuments, but which are read in the Acts themselves also. Further, it is credible that the biographer, who seems to have collected these Acts without sufficient knowledge and with almost no criticism, and to have seized upon everything which offered itself from every side, fell upon that abbot Giles who really lived with St. Caesarius, and by error attributed certain of his deeds to our Saint. The learned know how easily it happens that a man unskilled in chronological knowledge confounds persons of the same name, and so mixes all things together.

[60] [Whether the Veredemus recorded in the Acts is distinct from another of the same name:] It can be doubted, secondly, who is that Veredemus or Veredemius the hermit, who is said to have lived with St. Giles in a desert place near the river Gardon. For some make two Veredemuses, one from a hermit bishop of Avignon, the other a hermit in the territory of Uzès. Others will have it that he is one and the same, who first lived as a hermit in the territory of Uzès, and afterwards was promoted to the chair of Avignon. Benedict Gonon in the Lives of the Fathers of the West, book 3, from page 160, gave the Life of St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, which he says he received partly from the ancient monuments of the church of Avignon, partly also from Raulin of Cluny, a most learned and erudite man. In that Life he makes St. Giles the companion of Veredemus, afterwards bishop, whom he says flourished about the year 700, namely in the episcopate. The same writer in his notes on this Life observes that a certain holy Veredemus, a hermit, is venerated in the church of Uzès, and thinks him other than St. Veredemus the bishop. Le Cointe in the Annals of the Franks at the year 531, number XI, fights vehemently for the distinction of two Veredemuses, and judges that St. Giles's companion in solitude was he whom the church of Uzès venerates. His chief reason is that he thought St. Giles lived with St. Caesarius of Arles, and therefore was two centuries older than St. Veredemus the bishop. But that opinion has already been refuted, and so Le Cointe's chief reason utterly falls.

[61] the reasons brought forward for two Veredemuses In our Work there was brief treatment of Veredemus the bishop on the seventeenth of June, on which he is venerated at Avignon. The controversy is there left undecided, yet so that Henschen seemed to incline to the reported opinion of Le Cointe. It is more fully set forth on the twenty-third of August, on which at Uzès Veredemus the hermit is venerated, whom our Pinius thought more probably distinct from Veredemus the bishop, following Le Cointe's opinion somewhat timidly. But, as not even then did the distinction of the two seem certain enough, so now it appears to me much more uncertain, nay less probable, since by a more diligent investigation of the age of St. Giles the chief reason of the said distinction has been overthrown. Since nevertheless the praised Gonon, and others from him, brought forward other reasons also for that distinction, I shall discuss them briefly: Further, says Gonon, in the Breviary of the church of Uzès there is treatment of a certain Veredemius the hermit altogether different from that one (the bishop of Avignon). This is plain from this, that he led a solitary life in the district of Uzès, that the office is made of him from the common of a Confessor not a pontiff, that the feast of St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, is kept in the said church on the seventeenth of June, but that of this one on the twenty-first of the month of August, that the church of Uzès is said to have the body of that holy Veredemius … Assuredly these reasons prove that they are altogether two. Thus he reasons, nor have others added other reasons, save one which we have said is refuted.

[62] Now receive briefly how weak these reasons are. are utterly weak, Veredemus the hermit lived in the district of Uzès. But there also lived Veredemus, afterwards bishop, if we believe even Gonon himself, who writes thus of him: The Rhône being forded, when he had found near the bank of the river Gardon a certain hollow of a rock, he chose in it the place of his habitation. For the diocese of Uzès extends along the river Gardon as far as the Rhône. The same place therefore is designated, whether we say that he dwelt on the bank of the Gardon facing Avignon, or in the diocese or territory of Uzès. For which cause I vehemently suspect that it is the same Saint, since he is said to have dwelt in the same place. The second reason is from the diversity of the title which is attributed to Veredemus at Uzès, where he is venerated as not a pontiff, while at Avignon he is venerated as a pontiff. If these things are done without error, without doubt there are two Veredemuses. But since the men of Uzès know almost nothing of their Veredemus except that he is a Saint and dwelt in the territory of their city, who will make us secure that it does not come from error that the men of Uzès do not attribute the title of pontiff to their Veredemus? Certainly like errors are not infrequent in the case of Saints whose deeds are little known. The third reason, namely that the Saint's festival is celebrated on one day at Avignon and on another at Uzès, is nothing better, since that could likewise have arisen from error, or even from another cause. The fourth reason, about the body of St. Veredemus preserved at Uzès, is not without error. Hear part of a letter of Claude Castellan to our Elders, already adduced on the twenty-third of August under St. Veredemus the hermit: You seem, he says, on the seventeenth of June to distinguish St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, from Veredemus the anchorite of Uzès, who on the twenty-third of August is venerated in that church. But the lord Sanguin, canon of Avignon, signified to me that it is one and the same, certain of whose relics are preserved at Uzès. The whole body therefore is not preserved in each place.

[63] These reasons therefore do not sufficiently prove that there are two Veredemuses, so that verisimilarly the bishop is the same as the hermit. both of whom would have been Greeks, both of whom, their fatherland being left, would have come into Gaul, both of whom would have led a solitary life in the diocese of Uzès, as has been proved above. Nay, both would have flourished at the same time, if we say that St. Giles came to Veredemus the hermit and not the bishop, as Le Cointe and others would have it. Add that nothing is known of Veredemus's solitary life save from the Acts of St. Giles, in which mention is made of one only. Wherefore, whether I consider the reasons which are brought forward for the distinction, or those opposed to the distinction, I am compelled vehemently to suspect that there is one Veredemus,

who is venerated as a pontiff at Avignon, and as not a pontiff at Uzès. If nevertheless they are different, I do not doubt that the deeds of each have been confused; and it can with difficulty be determined which of them received St. Giles in his solitude. These things therefore being dismissed, I proceed to others.

[64] [Trithemius asserts that a certain Giles wrote on the art of medicine, doubting whether he is ours,] Johannes Trithemius in his Work on the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict commemorated certain things about our Saint in a twofold elogium. The first is held in book 2, chapter 22, where he writes this: Giles the abbot, a Greek by nation, a man learned in the divine Scriptures, and very skilled in secular letters; a philosopher, a poet, and a signal physician, excellent in verse and in prose, wrote in verse an excellent Work on Pulses, one book; and on Veins likewise in the same kind of speaking, one book. If he published anything more, it has not come to my notice. Some judge that this man was that holy abbot whose feast is venerated on the Kalends of September: whether this be so, I do not hold sufficiently clear. But this I know, that the time and the country agree with him, nor are two monks of this name found in the Chronicles, but one. And it is verisimilar that St. Giles before his conversion gave his labor to philosophy and medicine. He flourished about the year of the Lord DCCX. Hear another elogium also, book 3, chapter 162: Giles, monk and abbot, a Greek by nation, an Athenian by country, came from Greece as a pilgrim for Christ to the city of Arles, where he stayed two years with St. Caesarius, a bishop of our Order, and at length, fleeing to the desert, built a monastery by the king's command, and is made abbot of monks. He is read to have shone with many miracles both in life and after death. Of this most holy Man I seem to have made mention also in the second book. For he is reported to have written some things. He flourished in the year of the Lord DCCXL *, whose birthday is kept on the Kalends of September.

[65] which others also affirm: but this is little verisimilar of our Saint. Whence Trithemius drew what he hands down about the writings of St. Giles, I do not sufficiently perceive. Yet the same things Jacobus Philippus of Bergamo, a writer of the same time, has more briefly in the Supplement of the chronicles, book 10, at the year 714. Receive his words: Giles the philosopher, a Greek monk, was in those days illustrious in knowledge and in religion: who, besides the other things published by him, also composed in verse a book on the Pulse in medicine, whose beginning is: "The powers of my genius, unequal to moderate attempts." Likewise another on veins, which begins: "It is called * a vein, when one is made for the kidneys." Johann Jacob Hofmann in the Universal Lexicon at the word Ægidius embraces the aforesaid and attributes them clearly enough to our St. Giles, when he writes the following: Giles of Athens, a Greek physician and philosopher; presently professing the sect of the divine Benedict, under Tiberius the second, in the year of Christ DCC, left many writings to posterity, as one book on Pulses, one on Poisons (rather, on Veins). Wounded by a huntsman with an arrow, he was unwilling that the wound be healed, that he might be exercised by continual pains. And he cites for these things the man of Bergamo, Volaterrano, and Vincent of Beauvais: of whom the two latter certainly treat of St. Giles; but the first of a physician Giles otherwise unknown to me, whom I cannot judge to be the same as the Saint, both on account of the silence of all the more ancient writers, and because lucubrations on the physicians' art agree little with the eremitic or monastic institute, and finally because those Opuscula, from the beginnings of them alleged, seem to have been written in Latin, so that they seem to have a Latin author, not a Greek abbot, who verisimilarly was not sufficiently skilled in the Latin tongue.

* before DCCX

* perhaps dicetur

THE LIFE

by an anonymous author,

From six manuscript codices and other transcripts collated with one another.

Giles, abbot, at Saint-Gilles in Occitania. (S.)

BHL Number: 0093

By an Anonymous author.

PREFACE

The usefulness of writing the deeds of the Saints. The faithful of old, with careful deliberation, decreed to celebrate with manifold pursuit the deeds of the venerable Fathers, who are to be revered with a readier worship of reverence, and, celebrating them, to venerate them with all devotion of mind. For thus the praise of God, who works through them and reigns in them, is more widely spread abroad, and the minds of hearers, having received the report of so great a virtue, are more ardently stirred to the practice of living well. For the gentiles of old used to set up images of their ancestors, with this intention, namely, that the posterity of an age to come, beholding them, might strive the more fervently to apply its mind to the desire of virtue and the attainment of glory. How much more therefore ought the devotion of Christians, representing to itself more often the deeds of the Fathers who went before, to look into them as into certain mirrors, that by seeing through itself it may know itself?

ANNOTATION.

This Preface is read appended in four copies; in the rest the Life is begun without a preface. But the particle "therefore," placed in them also at the beginning of the Life, shows that a preface was present.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's country and parents: his going out from his country and coming into Gaul: his stay at Arles and his solitary life with Veredemus the hermit.

[ ] The Saint's country, parents, and studies as a boy: St. Giles therefore, a Greek by nation, drew his origin from illustrious parents. For he came forth born at Athens, of a father namely named Theodore ^a, and of a mother Pelagia: both of whom, sprung of royal stock, and although illustrious among the chief men of the whole world *, yet led a most Christian life. And the aforesaid Giles, being while tender in age set to the liberal rudiments, having been illumined by the grace of the Spirit of knowledge ^b, in a short time equaled the highest teachers. Nor was the grace of God lacking to the docile boy, adorning his life with all honorableness of manners. Already and already the lamp of charity, kindled within, was sparkling outwardly by its tokens.

[2] For on a certain day, while he was going to church, it happened that a certain sick man was lying in the street of the middle of the city *, he gives his tunic to a sick man, who, being clothed in it, is healed: asking food from those passing by. Pricked by his pitiable cries, the holy Boy, although he still reckoned his tutor's sentence formidable to him, yet, drawing off the tunic with which he was clothed, having nothing else more suitable to give, bestowed it upon the sick man. Clothed in which, the sick man straightway rejoiced that he had recovered the health of his whole body. But Giles, having returned home, and being asked, as a boy, where he had lost the tunic, answered that a certain man not well known to him had taken it away ^c. For which thing pardon was readily granted him, since by his parents, whose only son he was, he was most tenderly loved.

[3] [his parents being dead, he distributes his goods to the poor: he heals a man struck by a serpent:] And not long after, his parents having died in peace, whose death he himself a little before had foreknown by the Spirit's revelation, he made Christ the heir of his patrimony, which had remained to him large enough. In a wonderful manner also he grew rich by making himself poor, while for the expenditure of temporal things he gained eternal ones. Meanwhile, when on a certain day he was returning from church, there met him a certain man of most wretched appearance, who, lately struck by a serpent, with swelling skin confessed that he had received deadly venom. Whom the holy Man, prayer being poured out for him, restored to his former health; and bade him thereupon render thanks to God, by whose clemency he had been healed.

[4] he expels a demon from a man possessed: And on the Lord's day, while the sacred mysteries were being celebrated, a certain wretched man, seized by a demon, began to cry out with terrible voices, until almost the whole church was troubled. But Giles, who was there according to his custom, first, prostrate on the ground, prayed briefly, and at once rising, relying on the mercy of the Lord, confidently set himself before the possessed man as he tottered hither and thither, and openly commanded the malignant spirit to go out from him. Who, unable to transgress the Saint's command, left the man whom he had invaded unharmed, crying and bellowing horribly.

[5] [about to leave his country he comes to the sea, where by his prayers he helps men tossed by a storm;] But when the holy Man's virtue could not lie hidden by reason of its greatness, very many flocked to him, seeking remedies of body and soul. Nor indeed, where the cheerful Giver was, and what should be given was present in abundance, were they frustrated of the gift of their hope. And when the praises of proclamation followed his wondrous deeds, and his name became more and more known through all the parts of Greece, fearing lest by the wind of favor his merits should be in any way lessened, and judging it incautious to sell the treasure of a good conscience for the price of light fame, about to widow by his absence the country of his birth, that he might more freely have leisure for God, seeking the solitary life, he determined to cross the sea. And while, unknown to all his own, he came alone to the shore of the sea, and poured out prayers to the highest King that he would deign to help him to fulfill his purpose, he saw far off a certain ship tossed among the storms of the deep by the tempestuous beatings of the straits, and the sailors, now in despair and forgetful of all steering, almost shipwrecked. For whom, as soon as he offered to God the suffrage of his prayer, the storm being calmed, they came to harbor.

[6] who, being brought to shore, kindly take him aboard the ship: And the sailors, seeing the Man of God still lying at his prayers on the shore, perceived that they had escaped the perils of the sea through his prayers. And when they asked who he was, or for what cause he had come to the harbor of the sea, he answered that he was a Christian, and that he wished, if God supplied him the means, to go to Rome. But they, falling at his feet, We render, they said, the greatest thanks to the Lord, who deigned to bestow on us such a companion, who both freed us from the present storm, and, as we row hence through the deeps of the sea, will guard us from all fear of the waves. For we are from those parts: and if thou desirest to go thither, we will gladly carry thee with us without price: and moreover we will supply all things necessary for the body for the journey . Which the holy Man hearing, glad, he blessed the Lord, and, his own soul and those of his companions * being commended to God, the excellent exile, cheerful and rejoicing, going on board the ship, seized with his companions upon the journey of the mid-sea, the sails being spread.

[7] For four days therefore and as many nights sailing prosperously and straight , [after a prosperous voyage of four days, being brought to an island, they find a hermit:] they at length put in at a certain island. And there the sailors, having disembarked to gather ballast, saw faint footprints impressed on the shore's sand. Which following by diligent tracking, they came to a certain little cell, situated among the thickness of the briars, and, breaking in nearer, they see a certain man reading before the doors. But holy Giles, knowing him to be a servant of God, asked how long a time and in what manner he had lived there . Twelve years, said he, have I now passed here in penance, sustained only by the raw roots of herbs and by water. Which the holy Man hearing, that he was leading the life long desired by himself, first prayed a little, and afterwards rushed into his embrace, and thus each commended himself to the prayers of the other . And three days being spent there in the praises of God, they took leave of one another and departed.

[8] And having entered the ship, they glide in three days to the city of Marseilles ^d. [the ship being boarded again, they put in at Marseilles; thence Giles comes to Arles:] At that time therefore the pontiff Caesarius ^e of good memory was ruling the church of Arles

: hearing the proclamation of whose sanctity, Giles hastened the more quickly to Arles ^f, desiring to be instructed by the conversation and edification of so great a prelate. And at Arles a certain widow rich in wealth, named Theocrita, received him most dutifully into her hospitality. And while supper was being prepared, the Saint, hearing the lamentations of a sick person in a more secret part of the house, asked what this was. My lord, said Theocrita, it is my daughter, now for three years in a fever, for whose health I have squandered very great wealth, paying it out in vain to physicians. But thou, if thou knowest anything of medicine, I would that thou shouldst help her, and receive great rewards. But he, having confessed * that he knew nothing of earthly medicine, restored her by the accustomed antidote of prayers to the soundness she desired.

[9] And the fame of this miracle, being shortly noised abroad, came to the ears of the prelate Caesarius. [at Arles, where he is said to have been with St. Caesarius, he comes to St. Veredemus living in solitude:] He too had already known by the Spirit both his coming and his life. Presently therefore Giles, being summoned to the prelate by the archdeacon named Aurelius, is received with great veneration, and is detained there two years by many entreaties. But the Man of the Lord, the two years being passed, desiring to have leisure for God alone, withdrew thence secretly as a solitary, and, the Rhône being crossed, seeking along the bank of the river Gardon ^g some hiding-place fit for his purpose, by divine direction found a certain hermit named Veredemius ^h, distinguished in sanctity and in miracles. He was dwelling in the hollow of a certain rock, to which by the rough windings of the crags the ascent was difficult enough. Whose life holy Giles seeing to be divine, he lived with him for some time for the sake of edification. O divine disposal, narrable by none, who from parts of the earth so far remote didst gather these two stars into one, that, the one being illumined by the other, they might more splendidly light the world. And who could ever explain in words with how many * tokens of miracles both shone there? For no sick man for whom they besought the Lord was disappointed of the health he desired. St. Giles also is reported then to have put to flight by his prayers the barrenness of the land.

[10] living with whom for a time he shines with miracles. But of many let us succinctly report one, chiefly for this reason, that it was the cause of the bodily separation of the men of God. For indeed on a certain day, Veredemius being absent, a certain sick man, lacking the health of his whole body, was presented to holy Giles to be healed ⁱ, those who brought him earnestly swearing that they would by no means carry him thence before he had healed this man also, as he was wont to heal the rest. But he, striving to assert that the healing of others had been of Veredemius's merit, not his own, exhorts that this man also be offered to him to be healed. But they, not acquiescing in this opinion, but moreover objecting: Thou, who didst drive away the barrenness of our land, canst well, if thou wilt, obtain that this man also be healed. Overcome at last, the Man of the Lord, as he was of a gentle disposition, prayers being performed not without tears, restored the sick man, all ill health of body being driven away, to the soundness long desired.

ANNOTATIONS.

* elsewhere, urbis

* elsewhere, media

* elsewhere, referamus

* elsewhere, ob iter & gratanter

* elsewhere, suorumque

* elsewhere, directeque

* elsewhere, homuncionem

* elsewhere, devenisset

* elsewhere, mutuis

* elsewhere, confessus

* elsewhere, quantum

CHAPTER II.

His withdrawal to a more desert place, in which he is fed with the milk of a hind: he is found by Flavius, king of the Goths, and receives a place for founding a monastery, which he builds and begins to rule.

[ ] [The Saint withdraws into a desert place, where he is fed with the milk of a hind:] Fearing therefore lest, being esteemed of some moment among the peoples by the reports of this and of other miracles, he should maim his merit by some excess, and lest thus he should displease the reverence of his teacher, seeking again a more secret life, and following as it fled, he secretly penetrated, Veredemius being left behind, into the inner desert. And so he came by God's will to a certain place, not far from the flowing down of the river Rhône into the sea, whose name is Septimania ^a, overgrown with thickets and trees, and frequented only by the lairs of wild beasts. And there, finding a certain cave, beside whose entrance a little spring bubbled with pure water, he gave thanks to God as gladly as if he had found a hall of royal splendor. For three years therefore remaining there and praying for the salvation of the whole people, he lived on herbs and water alone, except that the Lord prepared for him a certain hind, which abundantly enough at fixed hours offered him the nourishment of refreshing milk.

[12] It befell therefore that the household of king Flavius ^b, who at that time held the monarchy of the Goths, [while the huntsmen of king Flavius pursue this hind, she is protected by the Saint's prayer;] entered the neighborhood of the aforesaid place for the sake of hunting. And seeing the hind which fed the Man of God with milk, more excellent than all the rest in body and beauty, the hounds being unleashed, they pursue her, the other beasts being despised. Who, while fleeing hither and thither she was pressed more and more by shouting and baying, now despairing of her life, fled to the refuge of her Nursling. Drawing near therefore to the entrance of the cave, she began with plaintive bellowings to beg as it were protection speedily of the holy Man. But he, wondering why she bellowed thus beyond her custom, having gone out, then heard the hounds and the huntsmen. And seeing the hind herself, drawing out her tongue with open mouth, and beating her flanks with frequent gasps, the matter being known, on bended knees he briefly besought the Lord that he would preserve her whom he had granted him as a nurse. And rising he signed * to the hind that she should spare her bellowings. And she, her voice being restrained, lay down beside his feet. But none of the hounds came nearer than within one stone's throw, but with a long howling they returned toward the huntsmen. And night coming on compelled them, weary with fruitless labor, to return home.

[13] And when morning came, all the king's household, about to hunt the aforesaid hind, hasten into the woodland. [hence the king himself with his men goes out to hunt the hind, and the Saint is wounded by an arrow:] What more? in the same fashion as the day before they returned disappointed. And when this had been reported to the king, suspecting the matter * as it was, having summoned the bishop of the city of Nîmes ^c, where he then by chance was, he narrated all in order. Then, a plan being settled, at the next dawning of the morning, with a multitude of huntsmen and hounds the king and the bishop went together into the woodland, to test the aforesaid matter. Following therefore the hind when she was started, as yesterday and the day before, as far as the place where the Saint dwelt, the hounds returning back with howling as they were wont, they surrounded in a circle the place, inaccessible by the thickness of the brambles and briars. And one, incautiously aiming an arrow to drive the hind thence, inflicted a grievous wound upon the Man of God, who was by chance praying before the doors of the cave for his nurse.

[14] [the Saint is found by the king and the bishop sprinkled with blood, to whom he narrates his life:] But the soldiers, pressing on more keenly, and even opening paths with the sword, came at length to the cave of God's Servant. And seeing an Old Man ^d clad in a monastic habit, and venerable in white hairs and in age, sitting (for the weakness of the wound, still dripping with blood, had meanwhile compelled him to spare his praying), and marveling too that the hind was lying beside his knees . The king alone with the bishop went to him on foot, all the rest being ordered to stand back. And after he, being first saluted, humbly returned their salutation, they asked who he was, and whence, and why he had penetrated so great a solitude of the desert, and who had presumed to wound him so grievously. But after he had set forth his name and country, and the cause of his coming thither, and also the manner of the wound; they, falling at his feet, begged pardon for so great a trouble, promising physicians and expenses for the healing of the wound.

[15] he rejects the medicine for healing the wound and the gifts offered: But the holy Man both prayed on bended knees that they might be forgiven, and asserted that he would not apply to himself any remedy of bodily medicine. And they presented very many gifts, from the looking upon which, much less the receiving, Giles abstained. Marveling therefore at a Man of so great sanctity, they commended themselves to his prayers, and, farewell being said on both sides, departed. Meanwhile the holy Confessor, perceiving that his outward man was somewhat afflicted by the wound inflicted, remembering straightway the heavenly answer, Strength is made perfect in weakness, besought the Lord that, so long as he lived in this world, he should by no means be restored to his former health.

[16] [but he persuades the king to build a monastery, which is built, that the Saint may rule it:] But afterwards the aforesaid king began frequently to visit him again for the sake of edification and for the pleasure of conversation, and to be instructed by his holy admonitions. And when he often offered him, refusing them, countless treasures, at length the Man of God admonished him that he should rather found from them some monastery, in which he might gather servants of God, who by the regular profession of monks might serve the Lord day and night. I will do gladly, said the king, what * thou dost urge, if thou wilt promise to be their spiritual father and ruler. Which burden St. Giles long and much refused, and, as a man of contemplation, strove to show himself by the assertion of very many arguments by no means fit for this business; at the last, overcome by the frequent petitions of the king and by his tearful supplications, at length willy-nilly he gave his assent.

The king therefore gladly built there two churches, Giles pointing out beforehand the place and the size: one in honor of St. Peter ^e and of all the Apostles, the other in honor of St. Privatus ^f the martyr, beside the Saint's cave, in which he alone, so long as he lived, passed the nights intent upon frequent vigils.

[17] monks being gathered, he presides as abbot, and is consecrated a priest. Servants of God are gathered there, following the rule of his direction, to serve the Lord by the regular profession of monks, to whose uses is granted the land round about the monastery, extended for a space of five miles, because St. Giles, having on a certain occasion gone forth from his cave, met king Flavius coming to him to converse, as is reported, at just so great a space. Meanwhile the Man of the Lord, at the very frequent and suppliant entreaty of his monks, and by the most devout assent of the chief men of the whole kingdom and of the peoples, is clothed with the diadem of the priesthood with a most worthy honor. Being raised to the summit of which honor, but, to speak more truly, of a present burden to him, he began by nightly vigils, daily fastings, and assiduous prayers so to afflict his body, already long enough attenuated by abstinence, that if you considered the life he now began, you would have said the life he had passed had been voluptuous.

ANNOTATIONS.

* elsewhere, imperavit

* elsewhere, rem divinam

* elsewhere, Januam & vestigia

* elsewhere, enarravit

* elsewhere, quod

CHAPTER III.

The government of the monastery; his going to king Charles and his return to the monastery, whose overthrow he shortly foretells: his journey to Rome, where he offers his monastery to the Pontiff, from whom he obtains a privilege of exemption and gifts, then returns to his own: the Saint's blessed death, and burial.

[ ] Ruling his own holily, he is summoned by Charles Martel, He treated also those subject to him with so discreet a moderation that, although he made known to them that the cross of the Lord was to be borne daily, he was held reverend by all rather by love than by fear *. But who, with running pen, could set forth the ardor of faith, the constancy of hope, and the breadth of charity of that company? Therefore the proclamation of so great religion came even to the ears of Charles ^a, king of France. Who, exceedingly desiring to see him and to be refreshed by his conversation, sent him legates, commanding and entreating that he would not disdain to visit him. These being received, the Man of the Lord, believing that he might in something profit him, judged it fitting to visit him, as he prayed by commanding and entreating. And so, the brethren being disposed and things necessary for the journey taken, going to the king, he lodged at Orléans ^b.

[19] he frees a man possessed, While therefore he was entering the basilica * of the holy Cross for the sake of prayer, an evil spirit in a corner of the church began to cry out through a certain possessed man with a terrible voice: Alas! alas! Giles, how great torments do I endure through thee! and how contrary is thy justice to my laws! Spare thy prayers a little, I say, that license of going hence may be given me. For being here shut in, I am tormented by thee. Which God's Servant hearing, the sign of the cross being impressed on his forehead, Enemy, he said, of the human race, depart. And he, giving a huge roar, left unharmed the man whom he had long and grievously vexed. Which miracle, at once noised abroad round about, made St. Giles, celebrated before, far more celebrated.

[20] is received kindly by Charles, and holds spiritual conversations with him, Then he sets out to king Charles ^c, by whom he was honorably received. And the king, seeing by the outcome * of the matter that whatever he had heard of him by the proclamation of fame was true, detained him with him by many petitions for some days. And when they frequently talked together of the contempt of the world and the desire of virtues and of this kind of thing; among other conversations of salvation the king by chance humbly asked him that he would deign to pray for him. For he had done a certain shameful crime which he had never dared to confess to anyone, nor to the Saint himself.

[21] and praying for him, learns the sin which Charles had blushed to confess: For on the next Lord's day, while the holy Man, celebrating Mass according to custom, was beseeching the Lord in the canon for the aforesaid king, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, placing upon the altar a little scroll, in which was written in order both that very sin of the king, and that it had been remitted him ^d by the prayers of Giles, if only he, repenting, should desist from it. It was also to be seen added at the end, that whoever should invoke St. Giles for any offense whatever, if only he ceased from the perpetrating of it, might without doubt believe that it had been remitted him by the Lord. Seeing which, God's Servant returned thanks to the Lord, and, the office being performed, gave it to the king to read. Recognizing therefore the crime which he had done, the king fell at his feet, entreating that he would by his prayers be his patron with the Lord. Whom the Man of the Lord commended to God by prayers, and kindly admonished him with threats not to repeat that offense any more.

[22] Some courses of days therefore being past, leave being scarcely obtained from the king, [on his return he raises a dead man; foretells the overthrow of his monastery, sets out for Rome,] returning to his monastery with the greatest honor and with very many gifts, and lodging at the city of Nîmes, he raised up the son of the chief man ^e, who had then died. Then, having returned to the monastery, and having lived there some time, the spirit of prophecy dictating to him, he indicated to certain spiritual brethren that the overthrow of his monastery by enemies would take place no long time after. Judging it therefore a prudent thing to do, he went to Rome with a few brethren, that he might both, first fulfilling his own desire, visit the confession of Peter and Paul, and also make over his monastery to Apostolic right, lest at some time it should be subjected to some lay person ignorant of ecclesiastical religion.

[23] Of this decree also he carried with him a privilege drawn up beforehand by the Apostolic one. where he obtains a privilege of exemption: he returns to the monastery, Two doors also of cypress, carved with images of the aforesaid apostles , which he had asked for the adornment of his monastery, the Apostolic one gave him as a pledge of charity and friendship. These the Man of the Lord, commending them to the divine governance, ordered to be let down into the Tiber ^f, all who were present saying that he was raving. But he, the business of his journey being performed, returns to Gaul. And, wearied with the difficulty of the journey, he stayed three days at Cavaillon [g]; where he restored to a certain crippled man his former step .

[24] And when he had come to his monastery, it was presently reported by certain persons [where he learns that the two cypress doors, cast into the Tiber at Rome, had come to land:] that two doors of wondrous carving were in the harbor, having put in without any steering. Which the holy Man hearing, is made glad, and returned boundless thanks to the Lord, who had deigned to steer them unharmed to him through so great a space of the sea, through so many whirlings of shoals, through so many collisions of rocks, and through so many puttings-in at harbors. Then he ordered them to be brought to the monastery, and set them up on the thresholds of the church for a present adornment and for use, and thereafter as a monument to posterity of the compact with the Roman See.

[25] Therefore, the brethren having been confirmed for some space of time in God's warfare, The Saint's blessed death. and the affairs of the monastery being suitably arranged, the Lord willing to crown with the crown of rewards a Soldier now retired for the labor of his contests, it became known to him by the spirit that the day of his departure was at hand. Which he indicated to certain spiritual brethren, humbly entreating them to pray for him. O Man of wonderful humility and chastened moderation , whom neither earthly things pressed down, so that he already conversed in the heavens, nor heavenly things lifted up, so that he did not seek help from the lowest. On the middle of the Lord's night of the Kalends of September therefore he migrated to the Lord, by the absence of his body leaving to the world the greatest sadness, but by his happy reception into heaven gladness. For there were present at his passing faithful men who said that they had heard choirs of angels bearing his holy soul into heaven with praises. May thy holy merits therefore, father Giles, we pray, come to our aid and help us with the Lord our God, who with his Son and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, through all the ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

the Scriptures and from solid doctors teaches that, outside the case of extreme necessity, to no baptized person is a crime committed after baptism remitted without confession and the priest's absolution. Thus he. Nevertheless, if nothing in this Life occurred deserving reprehension save this passage, which alone Hessels reprehends, it would be easy to bring the biographer by a fitting exposition to a Catholic sense. For he does not say that the sin was remitted to Charles without confession, or that it would be remitted to others for whom Giles should pray: but only omits mention of confession, yet in such a way that he tacitly insinuates confession in these words, If only he, repenting, should desist from it: for true repentance cannot exclude the will of confessing. Nay, he indicates confession clearly enough below, when he says: Recognizing therefore the crime which he had done, the king fell at his feet. Receive therefore briefly the writer's mind set forth in a more benign sense, as is fitting. Charles, driven at once by remorse of conscience and by shame, asks Giles to pray for him. The Saint by his prayer obtains for Charles the spirit of repentance, and, that his blushing may the more easily be taken away, is taught what is Charles's fault, which he was ashamed to confess. Hence the Saint by the scroll he received shows Charles that he is not ignorant of that sin. And Charles, his blushing being thus overcome, and being stirred by the grace of repentance, confesses his sin, and is gravely admonished by the Saint not to repeat it, and is granted absolution. So all things are understood in a Catholic and sufficiently natural sense: and so the Anonymous writer cited in the Commentary at number 47 in fact narrated the deed, who ascribed it to another Giles and to Charlemagne. For the rest, I would not contend for the fact itself, but it suffices to have set it forth in a Catholic sense: for the Acts do not deserve that any facts whatever be admitted as certain which are reported in them alone, or only among those who copied the Acts.

* elsewhere, haberetur

* elsewhere, basilica

* elsewhere, exitum

* elsewhere, permissum

* elsewhere, retulit

* elsewhere, having images .. carved upon them

* elsewhere, gressum

* elsewhere, Castitatisque mediocritatisque virum

* elsewhere, Calendas or Calendis