ON SS. MAURUS AND SALVINUS AND ARATOR, BISHOPS AND CONFESSORS,
AT VERDUN IN GAUL,
Before the middle of the fifth century.
A HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
Maurus, bishop, at Verdun in Gaul. (S.)
Salvinus, bishop, at Verdun in Gaul. (S.)
Arator, bishop, at Verdun in Gaul. (S.)
BY J. L.
§ I. Their cult and miracles from Bertharius; their bodies raised in the sixth century by St. Agericus in the church of St. Peter the Apostle, then in the ninth century translated to the church of St. Medardus; relics given to the monastery of Théologie.
[ ] Concerning the ancient cult of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator, made illustrious by notable miracles, Bertharius the presbyter has committed the following to writing and to the memory of posterity, in the brief History of the bishops of Verdun, in Luc d'Achery, volume 12 of the Spicilegium, page 252: The glory of the Saints After him (St. Sanctinus, first bishop of the church of Verdun, which venerates him on the XI of October) we read that there were St. Maurus, and St. Salvinus, and St. Arator, whose merits the frequent miracles at their tombs show forth: since their monuments were divinely shown to St. Agericus, and were by him honorably and most holily set in order. For of these things, which we have seen with our own eyes, we can relate very many. For in the time of king Lothair the younger, and of the lord Atto, bishop of our city, relics were taken from these most holy Men, and in our own times were carried to the monastery of Théologie, which is subject to this church . God is witness to my conscience that I cannot call to memory the things which from boyhood to full age I have seen the divine clemency work at their tombs by the merits of these Saints. How many blind were given sight, how many deaf were healed, how many lame were set upright, how many possessed were delivered, how many sick were freed from various infirmities, I can in no wise comprehend with my pen. Yet I will gather a few in brief.*
[2] Two crippled men entered their church for the sake of prayer, posthumous miracles from Bertharius: and were straightway set upright by the merits of these Saints. A certain woman named Emma, deprived for many days of the light of the present world, was there given sight in my presence. Likewise another woman, who was mute, after Matins were finished began to speak in my hearing. A certain man too, crippled for XI years, and lying for many years in the porch of the church of St. Stephen at Metz, had been carried in a little cart and brought to the tombs of these Saints. But in the first part of the night he began to utter cries, and uttering the same cries until Matins he deserved to obtain health. To see this marvel we came with the lord bishop Atto on the same day, and together with him we saw his hip with the leg flayed up to the buttocks, as though he had had nothing but bones: and he who had scarcely come in a cart, already an old man and full of days, returned home on foot and sound.
[3] the times are assigned in which he wrote, and these The History from which I have taken these things, Bertharius, a presbyter of the church of Verdun, in the Preface
says that he wrote to his prelate Dado after the latter had administered the bishopric for thirty-six years, and after the cathedral church, and the books and records of the holy fathers preserved in it, … had been for the greater part consumed by flames: now the 36th year of bishop Dado is to be joined with the year of Christ 916; for he ascended the chair in the year 880. Dado himself puts this beyond doubt in Augustin Calmet, volume 1 of the History of Lorraine, in the Proofs, column 540; where a document written by him concerning the deeds of his predecessors Hatto and Berhard is brought forward, whose beginning is this: In the eight hundred and ninety-third year from the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the fifth year of the reign of the lord Arnulf, most glorious king of Lorraine, and in the thirteenth of our own ordination, in the ninth Indiction, I, Dado, bishop of the church of Verdun, etc. Dado had succeeded Berhard, and he Hatto; who, as the former testifies in his praised document, lived in the times of the emperor Lothair, and likewise of Lothair his son; and he reached to the first year of king Charles. Lothair I, the emperor, having abdicated the empire, became a monk in the last year of his life, 855, in which his son Lothair entered upon the inheritance of those dominions which took from him the name of Lorraine, much wider than the present one. When Lothair the younger died in the year 869, his uncles Charles the Bald, king of France, and Louis, king of Germany, divided his kingdom between them in the following year.
[4] things happened which he relates of the Saints. From what has been said it appears, first, that Hatto, prelate of Verdun, died in the year 870; for Dado, bishop of the same city, writes that he reached to the first year of king Charles, namely of Lorraine, one part of which, in which Verdun was, Charles obtained, and the other his brother Louis, both with the title of king, in the said year 870: secondly, that the same Hatto, who, as Bertharius in d'Achery, page 261, affirms, presided over the church of Verdun for twenty-three years, began to sit in the year 847: thirdly, that the relics of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator were translated to the monastery of Théologie between the years 855 and 869; for Bertharius above at number 1 says that this was done in the time of Lothair the younger, the king. Of that translation there will be speech again below at number 9. The miracles which God wrought at the Saints' tombs, and which the same writer testifies that he saw, did not happen before the reign of Lothair the younger, that is, the year 855; as is gathered from what he relates in the praised d'Achery, page 261, about Berhard, the successor of Hatto, who died in the year 870: He made his Canons live canonically, … and instructed the boys (among whom I, Bertharius, was one) in human and in divine books, by himself and by others, with the utmost charity. The learned who have written about St. Agericus, prelate of Verdun, place the beginning of his episcopate about the middle of the sixth century. St. Gregory of Tours, in book 9 of the History of the Franks, chapter 23, refers his death to the 13th year of king Childebert II, which Ruinart, the editor of St. Gregory's Works, sets together with the year of Christ 588. From the age of that holy prelate the antiquity of the cult which SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator obtained at Verdun becomes known: For, says Bertharius, their monuments were divinely shown to St. Agericus, and by him honorably and most holily set in order for the veneration of the faithful.
[5] Of St. Agericus, who is venerated on the 1st of December, we have two Acts at hand; St. Agericus, their bodies having been shown him by angels in the shorter of which, which appear to me older than the other, it is related that angels revealed to him as he prayed the place where the bodies of our Saints rested. When on a certain night St. Agericus was praying in his chamber, the candle which, according to custom, was burning before his bed went out; and behold, with great splendor there came a multitude of angels leading choirs and praising the Lord, who revealed to blessed Agericus the bodies of the holy confessors Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator; who, having governed the church of Verdun very many years before him, lay hidden joined together in one tomb: whom St. Agericus raised and honorably placed. But those who lay under the same roof, terrified by the vision and the jubilation, became almost lifeless: whom the saint, consoling them, commanded not to tell to anyone what they had heard.
[6] That wonderful vision, in which the bodies of our Saints were shown to St. Agericus, raises them in the church of St. Peter the Apostle; as Hugh of Flavigny writes, is more fully described in his more prolix Acts and in the Chronicle of Verdun of Hugh, abbot of Flavigny, who in Philippe Labbe, volume 1 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 93, subjoins this: The bodies of the Saints, more precious than refined gold, were therefore made glad , and in the church where they had the seat of their repose, consecrated in the name of St. Peter the Apostle by blessed Sanctinus, they were honorably and most holily set in order by the man of God St. Agericus himself, on the day before the Nones of September; and the day of their translation and revelation has through succeeding times been marked with the honor of a yearly festival. Whose merits the frequent miracles at their tombs show forth. To these I subjoin what the author of the Chronicle of Verdun had set down earlier at page 83: Now those men of later time who were present at the translation which was made at that time by blessed Agericus related concerning blessed Maurus, and later men transmitted in writing to our own knowledge, that blessed Maurus, afflicted with various kinds of torments, bore witness to the truth and met martyrdom for the faith of Christ, as they themselves saw in his dead body, and, the Saint's body being not yet dissolved, handled his sweet wounds with pious kisses. Yet blessed Agericus and the faithful of that time did not ordain that his memory should be celebrated under the name and honor of MARTYR; which even today (as also the memory of SS. Salvinus and Arator) is venerated under the name of CONFESSOR.*
[7] [or of St. John the Baptist, as more recent writers will have it, with whom I do not agree.] The abbey of St. Vitonus, commonly Saint-Vanne, which is now seen within the citadel of the city of Verdun, was formerly in the suburbs, and was founded in the same place where once stood the most ancient church of St. Peter the Apostle, in which the Chronicle of Verdun asserts that the bodies of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator were found by Agericus and honorably raised. Le Cointe dissents from him in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 562, number 47. Among the churches, he says, which Agericus, bishop of Verdun, either built or repaired, the last place ought not to be held by the oratory of St. Martin, which he built in the city itself, and the other which, having formerly been erected near the walls of the city by St. Maurus, second prelate of Verdun, in memory of St. John the Baptist, and being almost ruined, he not only restored or enlarged in honor of St. Medardus, but also adorned with the bodies of his most holy predecessors Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator — who had sat in the second, third, and fourth place in the bishopric of Verdun — which were found there, as Wasburgius, or Richard de Wassebourg, observes in book 2 of the Antiquities of Gallia Belgica, published at Paris in the year 1549, folio 76. Thereafter this building was called indifferently St. John's and St. Medardus's, until the name of St. Maurus began to prevail under the pontiff Heymo. I read the like in Calmet, book 7 of the History of Lorraine, number 38, and in other recent writers who have followed Wassebourg. I do not agree with them, until it be proved by a document older than the Chronicle of Verdun — whose author Hugh of Flavigny ceased to live at the beginning of the twelfth century — that St. Maurus erected a church in honor of St. John the Baptist, and that in it he himself, Salvinus, and Arator were laid after their death. Meanwhile I adhere to him who asserts that the bodies of the Saints were raised by St. Agericus in the church where they had the seat of their repose, that of St. Peter the Apostle, in which also the tombs of the ancient prelates of Verdun, Pulchronius, Possessor, and Firminus, who succeeded our Saints immediately, were found beneath the monument of St. Vitonus in the time of bishop Hatto, as Bertharius plainly testifies in volume 12 of d'Achery's Spicilegium, pages 253 and 254. Of St. Pulchronius we have treated at the XVII of February. SS. Possessor and Firminus will be given at the III of December, and their successor St. Vitonus at the IX of November.
[8] The sacred bodies translated to the church of St. Medardus: When under the episcopate of Hatto the tombs of SS. Pulchronius, Possessor, and Firminus were found in the church of Peter the prince of the Apostles, or, as it was then called, of St. Vitonus, the bodies of our three Saints were resting in the church of St. Medardus: for they had been translated hither by Hatto's predecessor Hildinus or Hilduinus, who sat under the emperors Louis the Pious and Lothair I. Of that translation the Chronicle of Verdun makes mention in Labbe, page 120: He (Hatto) received a part of the relics of the holy confessors and likewise pontiffs Maurus, Salvinus, Arator, whose bodies had been revealed to St. Agericus and by him honorably and most holily set in order in the same church where they had first been buried, consecrated in the name of St. Peter the Apostle, but had been translated by the lord Hildinus into the new church of St. Medardus; and he laid them up in the monastery which is called Théologie, subject to his own church. Since the church of St. Medardus, into which Hildinus translated the bodies of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator, is here called new, I scarcely doubt that it was founded by that prelate, whom I read in Bertharius, page 260, to have been a good and holy man, who built many churches in the bishopric. Le Cointe, whose words I gave above, Calmet, and others write, following Wassebourg, that before Hildinus there existed at Verdun a church of St. Medardus, which St. Agericus built in the sixth century: but for me to believe this to be true, it must first be proved by suitable authority.
[9] Concerning the abbey of Théologie, formerly subject to the church of Verdun but now to the archbishopric of Trier, relics given to the monastery of Théologie. to which in the praised Chronicle the relics of our Saints are said to have been translated by bishop Hatto, there may be read the Preliminary Commentaries on St. Paul, prelate of Verdun, at the VIII of February from number 9, and on St. Conrad, archbishop-elect of Trier, at the 1st of June, number 1. Bertharius, at the beginning of this Collection, says that in the time … of Lothair the younger, the king, that is, between the years 855 and 869, the said abbey of the Order of St. Benedict, commonly called Tholey, was enriched with those sacred relics by Hatto. At this day I found a writing laid aside which, as Sollier noted, the lord abbot Theobert of Théologie sent in the year MDCCXXXIV, on the 1st of February. At the end it has this to our purpose: In a certain book of Epistles and Gospels of the monastery of Théologie there is a catalogue of relics, which begins thus: These are the relics which are contained in the very long shrine, etc.; where, after other relics of Saints muneratas, is read: The arm of St. Maurus, the arm of St. Salvinus, the arm of St. Arator.
Annotationsread delatæ* read levata*
§ II. The church of St. Maurus in the castle of Hatto,
and the abbey of nuns at Verdun, where his body and those of Salvinus and Arator are honored; the proper Offices and the Martyrologies; the memory of their deeds obliterated.
[The arm of St. Maurus laid up in the castle of Hatto, whose church was consecrated to the Saint about the year 1328] To the words transcribed from the Chronicle of Verdun at number 8 these are immediately subjoined: But the other arm of St. Maurus, Hatto laid up beneath the altar in the church which he himself had built in the new castle, which is now called from its founder's name the castle of Hatto, for the salvation and protection of posterity. Hatto, in the place which took its name from him, had not only erected an altar to St. Maurus, under which he laid his arm, but had also built the church itself in honor of the same Saint: for among other things which will presently be produced from an instrument drawn up before the middle of the fourteenth century, this occurs: By whose (St. Maurus's) merit and honor the parish church of Hatton-Châtel was anciently founded. The castle of Hatto, commonly Hatton-Châtel, lies between the rivers Meuse and Moselle, three leagues from the town of Saint-Mihiel, and about six from the city of Verdun. After the times of its founder Hatto it grew into a small town; in whose parochial church, consecrated to St. Maurus, Henry d'Aspremont, bishop of Verdun, instituted a college of canons about the year 1328. Calmet, in the Proofs of the History of Lorraine, volume 2, from column 581, produces the very letters of the prelate Henry erecting the collegiate church at Hatton-Châtel, from which I excerpt the following.
[11] it is raised from a parish into a collegiate church. Considering that among the most reverend fathers and most blessed prelates who have hitherto for their time presided over our church of Verdun, the most blessed confessor of God, St. Maurus, by his most lucid and salutary teachings made illustrious our aforesaid church of Verdun, adorned it with virtues, and formed it in good morals; by whose lofty virtues and comely works the ample fabric of this our same church glows as with blooming gems, and, more gloriously raised on high by a singular elegance, shines forth: to the honor of the divine name and the glory and salvation of the faithful, and out of reverence for the aforesaid excellent confessor St. Maurus, by whose merit and honor the parish church of Hatton-Châtel was anciently founded — being led by pious counsels and stirred by worthy zeal, we ordain with one accord by this present writing, to be valid in perpetuity, that in the aforesaid parochial church there be a greater number of persons rendering there henceforward humble service to the Lord. Wherefore we unanimously establish, and inviolably will and decree, that in the aforesaid church, which had been merely parochial, there be and be made an approved college, in which there shall then be twenty canons and as many prebends. The rest may be read in Calmet, who in book 25 of his History, number 103, writes that the chapter of canons was translated from Hatton-Châtel to the town of Saint-Mihiel in the year 1707.
[12] [An abbey of nuns is joined to the church of St. John the Baptist, venerable for the Saints' bodies,] The author of the often-praised Chronicle of Verdun, in Labbe, page 173, says: But neither did the lord Heimo himself, bishop of Verdun from about the year 987 to 1024 or thereafter, offer a mind idle of good works; but rather he restored and improved the church of St. John situated in view of the city, in which the holy confessors Maurus, Salvinus, Arator rest, and instituted in it a congregation of nuns living according to rule under the direction of father Richard, abbot of St. Vitonus — whom we gave at the XIV of June — and by his counsel provided them a mother, Adelberga, a faithful handmaid of Christ, who was surnamed Ava, whose memory is everlasting. The question here is of the beginnings of the abbey of Benedictine nuns of St. Maurus, formerly also called St. John's, and founded outside the walls of Verdun; but which now is called by the name of St. Maurus alone, and is seen within the city walls. Theoderic, bishop of Verdun from the year 1047, in a charter of donation destitute of chronological notes, which Calmet gives in the Proofs of the History of Lorraine, volume 1, from column 420, says that after his ordination he had cherished with all love the monastery of St. John situated in the neighborhood … of the city, honorably begun by bishop Heymo, his predecessor of blessed memory, … and more honorably exalted by the devotion of the faithful; where also the body of the holy confessor of Christ, Maurus, rests, adorned, thanks be to God, with very many miracles. All the possessions of the same monastery were confirmed on the XXIV of October of the year 1049 by St. Leo IX, Pope, in whose Bull, which the praised Calmet brings forward from column 424, Heimo is said to have renewed and equipped, for the convenience of water, a place situated in the suburb of Verdun beside the brook of Scancia , and built in honor of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, where the bodies of the holy Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator are venerated by the inhabitants of that city*, so that the nuns whom he there established under the monastic rule might have all their necessaries within the bounds of that place.
[13] Wassebourg and Calmet, cited at number 7, and also Le Cointe, [formerly also, as is believed, called St. Medardus's; which took the name of St. Maurus from its new patron.] whose words I there reported, affirm that the old church of St. John the Baptist (in the Bull of Leo IX there is added and of St. John the Evangelist), when it was ruinous or wholly fallen down, was rebuilt and consecrated to St. Medardus — in the sixth century by St. Agericus, as they will have it, or rather in the ninth by Hildinus? The second I prefer to believe rather than the first. See what was said at number 8. To our purpose the praised Le Cointe observes that the said church, rebuilt in honor of St. Medardus, bore the name both of this saint and of the ancient patron St. John the Baptist until the times of bishop Heimo, under whom it began to be surnamed St. Maurus's. Wassebourg adds, in book 2 of the Antiquities of Gallia Belgica, folio 76, that another church was then built to St. Medardus in a place near the new abbey of St. Maurus; to which even today the parochial church of St. Medardus lies immediately adjacent. I bring this forward to the end that the reader may not at once infer from what was said at number 8 and in the preceding number that between the episcopates of Hildinus and Heimo the bodies of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator were translated from the church of St. Medardus to another; since the said authors do not distinguish from it the church of St. John the Baptist, where they were kept under bishop Heimo, who established in it nuns of the Order of St. Benedict. The anonymous monk of St. Vitonus, who continued Bertharius's History of the bishops of Verdun to the middle of the eleventh century, in d'Achery, volume 12 of the Spicilegium, page 266, says: O how great was the solicitude of this man Heimo toward the churches! since he changed the church of blessed John the Baptist, enlarged it when changed, and provided the congregation with necessaries out of the goods of the greater church … By his example and at his desire the Provost Amicus built the church of the Holy Cross, placed twelve canons there … and at the bishop's petition … did not refuse to subject them to St. Maurus, that is, to bind them, as is set forth in the praised Bull of St. Leo IX, that as hebdomadaries they should serve the divine offices in the already-mentioned monastery founded by Heimo, and should receive their canonical portion only from the abbess. Hence it is gathered that Heimo consecrated to St. Maurus, as at least a secondary patron, the church of St. John the Baptist which he himself had enlarged; from whom the abbey joined to it, which bishop Theoderic in the preceding number calls the monastery of St. John, also took the name of St. Maurus, which alone is in use today.
[14] While Girberga the abbess presided over the convent of St. Maurus at Verdun, The piety of a certain matron toward him; a certain noble woman, her kinswoman, named Richildis, … having lost her husband, … dwelt in the monastery not a few days. Meanwhile she turned her mind to a second marriage: but since she had much reverence for that basilica, both on account of the suffrages of the Saints (Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator, whose bodies rest there) and on account of the religion of those who dwelt in it, it pleased her that she should pay a victim to God and to St. Maurus rather from herself than from other and outside goods. She came therefore to the altar of St. Maurus on the day before she had appointed to marry a second time, and vowed herself and the children to be born of her to God and to St. Maurus on this condition, that each offspring should offer a yearly rent at the altar of St. Maurus, a male indeed two denarii, a female three obols. So that pious matron ordained, an instrument being drawn up concerning this matter in the year MCIII, the venerable bishop Theoderic presiding over the see of Verdun, etc. But these chronological notes do not hang together; for in the aforesaid year Richer, the successor of Theoderic, who had died in the year MXC, was presiding over the church of Verdun. So Mabillon, volume 5 of the Benedictine Annals, book 70, number 71.
[15] [who even now rests in the abbey of his name with Salvinus and Arator: relics elsewhere.] Further, the bodies of our three holy Prelates, which the abbey of St. Maurus has possessed from the beginning of its foundation, are even now religiously preserved in its church. The third of them, St. Arator, Castellanus mentions thus in the Supplement ahemerorum, page 909: St. Arator, bishop of Verdun, whose body the nuns of St. Maurus of Verdun honor together with the bodies of St. Salvinus and of St. Maurus, bishop of Verdun, the patron of their church after St. John, who is its ancient titular patron. The sacred bodies with which the nuns of St. Maurus are enriched are not entire: for by bishop Hatto, as was said above at number 9 and following, an arm of each Saint was translated to the abbey of Théologie, and another arm of St. Maurus to the castle of Hatto. Of this Saint also some relics — I know not what — are kept at Paris in the abbey of nuns of the Order of St. Benedict of Val-de-Grâce; as the Paris Martyrology published in the year 1727 informs me, announcing St. Maurus at the VIII of November thus: At Verdun, of St. Maurus the bishop, of whom relics were piously laid up at Saint Mary in Val-de-Grâce by Anne of Austria, queen of France, mother of king Louis XIV.
[16] [The memory of their translation is kept with a proper Office on the 4th of September:] In the Calendar which is prefixed to the Breviary of the church of Verdun reprinted at Paris in the year 1625, there is noted at the IV of September: The Translation of the blessed Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator, bishops of Verdun, 9 lessons. In the lessons of the first and second Nocturn, which the Breviary sets forth to be recited, various things are related about the life of St. Maurus which do not deserve a prudent man's credit, as will be shown in the last number. The lessons of the third Nocturn contain the same things which I transcribed above from Bertharius; but some less likely, nay even false, things are mixed in, which can be corrected from what has been said before and even from Bertharius himself. The author of the lessons seems to have taken everything from Wassebourg, book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 30 verso and following, and also folio 35; which writer I should value more highly if he had distinguished the apocryphal from the genuine, and had faithfully rendered into French what he had found in the History of Bertharius and in other trustworthy records. The ninth lesson concludes thus: By the merits also of the most blessed Maurus the city of Verdun was preserved from an impending fire; and the fire
and the power of the raging winds was so stilled that not even the house from which the fire had gone forth suffered any damage. To these I add what an anonymous author of the sixteenth century writes about St. Salvinus in the Chronological Series of the bishops of Verdun, in Johann Friedrich Schannat, Collection 2 of the Vindemia litteraria, page 91: He rose to so great a fame of sanctity that abortive births exposed before that Saint's bones, and pregnant women, recover life and health.
[17] on which day they are inscribed in several Martyrologies. The Translation of SS. Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator, whose memory the people of Verdun keep on the IV of September, is that very one which was made in the sixth century by St. Agericus. The Chronicle of Verdun affirms this most clearly in the words adduced above at number 6. Of the Martyrologies which commemorate the Saints on the same day, few are accurate and none ancient. That of Usuard, in the Florentine codices and in the editions of Belinus and Molanus, is enlarged with the announcement of St. Maurus, confessor; but not sufficiently, for Salvinus and Arator ought to have been added. Neither is it sufficiently enlarged in the Brussels Manuscript codex, which, like our Manuscript Florarium of the Saints, is silent about Arator, and for Salvini has Silvini. In the Luxeuil transcript, which names each of them, is put Sylvani; in Ferrarius in the general Catalogue of the Saints, and in Saussay in the Supplement to the Gallican Martyrology, Sylvini. Rightly Grevenus: The Translation of the holy confessors and pontiffs Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator; and the German Martyrology of Canisius, as it is usually called: Likewise at Verdun the elevation of the saints, etc.
[18] The church of Verdun keeps the birthday of St. Maurus on the X of November, The cult of St. Maurus on his birthday, the 10th of November: on which day the said Breviary of that church prescribes an Office of nine lessons. In the first six the subject is the eternal blessedness which St. Maurus enjoys and which his pious imitators and clients shall enjoy. The last three are from the Homily of St. Gregory the Pope on the Gospel according to Luke: At that time the Lord appointed, etc. St. Maurus is recorded at the said X day of November in four enlarged Martyrologies of Usuard. In the Luxeuil one is read: At Verdun, of St. Maurus, bishop and confessor. The Bordeaux one scarcely differs. The Brussels one has: At Verdun the deposition of St. Maurus, bishop of that same city, and confessor; the one published by Grevenus: Of Maurus, bishop. In the Roman Martyrology the Saint is announced at the VIII of November: At Verdun, of St. Maurus, bishop and confessor. On the same day — on which, however, he is venerated neither at Verdun nor elsewhere, so far at least as I know — he is commemorated by Molanus, Ghini, Galesinius, Saussay, Castellanus, and in the Paris Martyrology of the year 1727, whose words I gave at number 15. Further, although in the diocese of Verdun the feast of the deposition of St. Maurus is celebrated on the X day of November, yet because nothing worth relating about his life has been handed down to posterity, while the things concerning his posthumous glory which have come to our knowledge are for the greater part common to SS. Salvinus and Arator, I have thought that he ought not to be separated from them, but that all should be given together on this day, on which the memory of their translation is kept, and which alone the people of Verdun have consecrated to the cult of SS. Salvinus and Arator.
[19] of whose life and that of the others nothing trustworthy survives oblivion. What Wassebourg in book 1 of the Antiquities and other more recent writers have handed down about the life of each of the bishops Maurus, Salvinus, and Arator seems to me certainly fictitious: on transcribing which I do not care to waste time, since I can sufficiently prove this even though I do not set them before the readers' eyes. The History of the bishops of Verdun, begun by Bertharius and continued by the anonymous monk of St. Vitonus to the middle of the eleventh century, Laurence of Liège carried down to the year 1144: which writer, in d'Achery, volume 12 of the Spicilegium, page 274, in the letter by which he dedicates his labor to Albero, bishop of Verdun, thus complains of the deeds of our Saints and of other prelates being brought into oblivion: Behold, your holy predecessors Sanctinus, Maurus, Salvinus, Arator, Pulchronius, Possessor, Firminus, Vitonus, and many others — at what time they lived, what wonders, what deeds they wrought while alive, we today know not, and — O shame! — we suffer an unworthy ignorance of our Patrons, by whose merits we are made illustrious. In the same place, page 275, he says: Yet the pious industry of Bertharius is to be praised, who from the very ashes and ruins of the burnt city and church dug out everything as he could, at least the bare names of the prelates his predecessors, or struck out for us some sparks of their deeds: for we have received from him even that very slight knowledge of our prelates; who nevertheless rescued from oblivion nothing at all pertaining to the life of St. Maurus, or St. Salvinus, or St. Arator. From these things it remains that the things which Wassebourg and others relate our three Prelates to have done while they lived were most probably devised after the year 1144, in which Laurence of Liège made an end of writing, and consequently do not deserve credit. Our Saints departed this life and their bishopric before about the year 450; for it is the opinion of many, nay of all, that St. Pulchronius, their next successor, then presided over the church of Verdun — provided you extend the time assigned, by means of the added word "about," from the year 440 to 460.
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