ON ST. THEODARD, BISHOP OF MAASTRICHT AND MARTYR,
AMONG THE NEMETES IN GERMANY
ABOUT THE YEAR 668.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Theodard, bishop of Maastricht, martyr among the Nemetes in Germany (St.)
BY J. L.
§ I. The Acts to be published, the most ancient of which seem to have been written before the middle of the eighth century.
[ ] Among the various Acts of St. Theodard, bishop of Maastricht on the Meuse and martyr, which I have before my eyes, by far the most ancient are those the author of the Acts which will be given in the first place is anonymous whose transcript is noted at the head to have been copied from a manuscript of the Cistercian Fathers of 's-Hertogenbosch, that is, of the Cistercian monks of the priory of Mariënkroon; who at the end of the sixteenth century, being compelled to go into exile from Heusden for the faith, migrated to 's-Hertogenbosch, and inhabited that city until the year 1629, in which it was stormed by the Dutch. Those Acts probably have an author older, as will presently be seen, than the middle of the eighth century, but otherwise unknown to me. They have hitherto, so far as I know, never been published entire in print: I have been able to find only some parts excerpted from them in printed books. Nor has any other manuscript copy which exhibits the same Acts entire come into our hands beside the 's-Hertogenbosch transcript; which will be published in the first place after this Commentary, divided into two chapters, the first of which, written in an ancient hand as it appears to me, but somewhat abridged here and there, is extant in the codex of our museum marked Q Ms. 5. From this only those variant readings will be brought forward in the Notes which shall seem to me more worthy of observation than the rest.
[2] The anonymous author thus concludes the Prologue prefixed to the Acts: [he denies that he is much later than the passion of St. Theodard: but he shows himself to be younger] Of which college of holy Martyrs there arose, not many seasons since, the bishop Theodard; concerning whose life and deeds we have thought it worth while to bring forth a certain little spark, and to publish in what order he entered the way of all the earth. This biographer denies that he is much later in time than the martyrdom of St. Theodard, suffered about the year 668, as will be shown at number 21: but toward the end of the Acts he records such things concerning St. Lambert as show that he did not write before about the year 721. In the village, he says, which the water of the river washes on one side, where the same Lambert afterwards succeeded as bishop, and consecrated the ashes of his own body by departing from this light, he chose with the highest reverence a burial for the holy bishop of God, Theodard, whom he had taken up from the place where he had first been buried not far from the arena of his martyrdom. By the village of which mention is here made, Liège must be understood, now a most spacious city, occupying both banks of the Meuse; but in the times of SS. Theodard and Lambert a small village on the left bank of the same flowing river: where there was then to be seen a little church or chapel of SS. Cosmas and Damian, erected in the sixth century by St. Monulph, bishop of Maastricht, of whom we treated at the sixteenth day of July. Into that chapel St. Lambert transferred the body of St. Theodard, being afterwards made bishop of Maastricht; over which church, when he had presided for forty years, as is read in Surius at the third of November in the Life of his successor St. Hubert, written by his own disciple, he fell a martyr in the same chapel about the year 708; but his body was laid at Maastricht in the tomb of his father Aper; which body, however, St. Hubert, as is related in the aforesaid Life of him, in the thirteenth year of his episcopate, about the year of Christ 721, carried back into the said chapel of SS. Cosmas and Damian, by that time enclosed within the building of a larger church. Anselm, canon of Liège, whose date will be indicated below, in Chapeaville's Deeds of the bishops of Tongeren, Maastricht and Liège, tome 1, chapter 21, asserts concerning St. Hubert: He, together with the bones of blessed Lambert, transferred to Liège the see of the bishopric, which until then was held at Maastricht.
[3] [to be of about the year 721: yet he is probably older than the middle of the eighth century:] The biographer, by the words reported in the preceding number, in which he says that St. Lambert chose a tomb for St. Theodard in the village of Liège, where the same afterwards succeeded as bishop, either treats of a succession in the place of burial, and hints at the translation of St. Lambert; or of a succession in the episcopal chair, and places this at Liège by anticipation: for no one will persuade me that the biographer, who had before affirmed that St. Theodard was substituted for St. Remaclus in the episcopate, whose seat was held at Maastricht, wished afterwards to signify elsewhere that the episcopal chair was in the village of Liège, which even at that time, when after forty years had elapsed from thence the holy Lambert was there put to martyrdom, was an ignoble place, as Godescalc testifies, the contemporary writer of his life, in the aforesaid Chapeaville, tome 1, chapter 7. To the village, he says, as yet of small name .. which is called Liège and is washed by the river Meuse, Dodo came with gathered forces to kill St. Lambert. There the holy man was at that time dwelling… There he was intent upon prayer, not in spacious or elaborate buildings, but in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian within a small and mean enclosure, etc. It remains from what has been said that our biographer did not write before the body of St. Lambert, together with the episcopal see, had been transferred from Maastricht to Liège about the year 721, the fifty-third from the passion of St. Theodard. No more probable time at which he committed the Saint's Acts to writing seems to me able to be assigned than that which elapsed after the year 721 down to the middle of the eighth century, before which also the lives of SS. Lambert and Hubert were first written. Certainly that saying of our biographer in the Prologue: Not many seasons since there arose the bishop Theodard, comes nearer to the truth if he be held to be older than the middle of the eighth century than if he be held to be later than it.
[4] After a long and obscure Prologue, which he begins from the very creation of the world, the defects noted in his narrative do not prove the contrary, the biographer at once relates how St. Theodard was taken up to the administration of the church of Maastricht, resigned by St. Remaclus; whom he then proclaims to have excelled in almost all the virtues which adorn a bishop, recording very few of the Saint's deeds, and those only summarily. His martyrdom, and the prodigies which followed, by which his sanctity became known, as well as his first burial and the translation of his body to the village of Liège, he everywhere pursues in the manner of a declaimer with a wordy narration. Most displeasing in it are the poetical phrases inconveniently inserted and the rather prolix speeches of the persons who are brought in speaking; which no one will believe to have been uttered in the words which the biographer uses. Yet all these things do not afford a sufficient foundation for supposing that he wished to impose upon the reader and made himself older than he really was: for like defects are detected also in other authors of the eighth century,
who were equally near to, or nearer than, the Saints whose Lives they wrote. Nor ought it to seem so very strange if our biographer was not sufficiently informed of the deeds done by the holy bishop: for the interval of time between the two, which I designated in the preceding number, was not so short that he could not easily have been ignorant of many things concerning the Saint; just as it was not so long that he must be thought to have said falsely in the prologue that St. Theodard arose not many seasons since.
[5] The Life of St. Remaclus, written by Notger bishop of Liège before the end of the tenth century, and in our Work at the third of September inserted for the most part piecemeal into the preliminary Commentary, [What Notger wrote concerning the Saint has perished. The elogium of St. Theodard which is commonly attributed to the author Anselm] Surius published entire with the style altered; but he preserved the genuine phrasing in the prefixed letter to Werinfrid, abbot of Stavelot, in which Notger says: Not only the times and deeds of him whom we have mentioned, namely of holy Remaclus, but also of the other bishops of our see, so far as they could be scraped together from any quarter, I have gathered down to our own times, and, for what you were longing with the strongest desire, I have offered to your wishes the Life of St. Remaclus taken out of it. Of the Work of which Notger here confesses himself the author, the latter part, embracing the deeds of St. Theodard and his successors, has been lost. But the earlier part, or the deeds of the bishops who before our Saint sat at Tongeren and Maastricht, I believe to be extant in Chapeaville, attributed to Hariger abbot of Lobbes, because he revised, polished and issued the same under his own name. See Bolland at the third of February in the Commentary on St. Hadelin, §3. To the lucubration ascribed to Hariger there is next subjoined, in Chapeaville's edition, the History of the bishops of Maastricht and Liège, continued from St. Theodard to the death of Wazo, bearing as its author Anselm, canon of the church of St. Lambert at Liège. But he too was not the author of that History, except in the sense that he published the same, composed by another and perhaps revised and polished by himself. will be published in the second place,
[6] From what writer Anselm took his History, and at what time he did so, he declares in the proem in these words: Thereafter the things which follow concerning St. Theodard and his successors down to Wazo, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand and fifty-six, have been annexed to this Work, that is, of Hariger, from the little book of another's Work, which a certain one of the canons of St. Lambert, Alexander by name, composed at the urging of Ida the venerable abbess, who governed the monastery of the holy virgin Cecilia at Cologne. Wazo, bishop of Liège, ceased to live in the year 1048 or thereabouts. Alexander must have begun to write shortly after; since Anselm frankly confesses that in the year 1056 he took the Acts of St. Theodard and of the following bishops from his lucubration. Entire and pure, as Anselm committed them to writing, under whose name they will hereafter be cited, they came forth from an ancient manuscript codex of the monastery of Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes, from the Paris press in the year 1729, inserted in Martène's most ample Collection of ancient writers, tome 4, from column 843. The elogium with which our Saint is there adorned will be reprinted after this Commentary and after the more ancient Life of him, collated with the edition of Chapeaville; which presents Anselm's Proem foully mutilated and corrupted, and in other matters also differs very greatly from the manuscript codex of the best quality which Martène used. Whoever desires to be more fully informed about the writings of Alexander and Anselm, canons of the cathedral church of Liège, let him consult the authors of the Histoire littéraire de la France, tome 7, from page 474.
[7] and then the fuller Life written by Sigebert of Gembloux. In the last place will be given from Surius the fuller Acts of St. Theodard, purged of some blemishes with the help of a certain manuscript, received I know not whence, and of variant readings which the printed copy of Surius's edition that is in my hands has noted in the margin from a manuscript codex of Rooklooster. The author of those Acts is Sigebert, monk of Gembloux, who in the last chapter of his book On the illustrious writers of the Church says: I improved the Lives of the saints Malo and Theodard with a more polished style. Sigebert flourished at the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the following. But the Life of our holy Bishop, which he says was changed by him for the better, is that of whose very ancient anonymous author I treated above. The things which were handed down to memory by him Sigebert relates in another and more polished speech, everywhere more explicitly, and here and there also more concisely: but to those things which he found in the older Life, and improved as to style, he wove in very many things received from elsewhere, which render it worse; since most of them are either suspect or false, as will be seen in their places, or do not pertain to St. Theodard. I judge that the Life which Giles of Liège, monk of Orval, wrote in the twelfth century is not to be published. In our transcript from the Utrecht manuscript of St. Saviour's it is in many places more compendious than in Chapeaville, who published it entire after Anselm's elogium of the Saint. Hence Giles culled some things; some also he borrowed from Sigebert of Gembloux; almost all the rest he transcribed from the older Life, which, translated almost wholly into the Flemish tongue, is extant in the codex of our museum ✠ Ms. 37, written three hundred years ago. I have turned over many other Acts and elogia of our Saint, both manuscript and printed, whose authors drew everything from the same sources as Giles, if you except a few things extracted from the Lives of SS. Lambert and Remaclus and from other literary monuments, which will be reported in the course of the Commentary.
§ II. The Saint's life before the episcopate, concerning which various suspect and false things are handed down: he was the disciple of St. Remaclus, but not abbot of Stavelot or Malmedy.
[ ] [Some say the Saint was a Gaul by nation, others fable that he was the son of a prince of Bavaria.] Sigebert of Gembloux says that the Saint was born in a noble station in Gaul, but does not express from what stock or in what region of Gaul he was begotten. Jacques Lobbet, in his little work On the glory of the church of Liège, page 54, says: There are those who, with Sigebert, will have him a Gaul by nation and noble by house. Two most ancient manuscripts which I have read prove, with family arms also added, that he was the son of a prince of the Bavarians, which pleases me more. Lobbet calls in vain the two manuscripts which he cites most ancient: for if they even exhibit the Saint's family arms, any learned reader will deny that they are old enough to establish belief. I have indeed a strong suspicion that in each manuscript which Lobbet saw the same fabrication is reported which the author of the Life of St. Theodard in the Maastricht codex ✠ Ms. 79, written no earlier than toward the end of the fifteenth century, foisted in with these words: This man, the son of a great Baron of Bavaria by the daughter of the count of Namur. This fable, ineptly and unskilfully invented, I find inserted into the Saint's elogium in two other more recent manuscripts of our museum, as also in the futile Catalogue of the bishops of Tongeren, Maastricht and Liège, which Johannes Placentius published in print before the middle of the sixteenth century.
[9] The birth of St. Theodard, and his placing in some monastery I know not which, Sigebert says that he was born and made a monk under Lothar II, to which he was offered by his parents in extreme boyhood or early adolescence, and the first probation of the monastic life, Sigebert attaches to the times of Lothar II, king of the Franks. It is well to adduce the biographer's own words. Blessed Theodard, born in Gaul, becomes illustrious for the noble lineage of his parents, destined to be the ornament of the kingdom and the glory of the Church. At that time Lothar, son of Chilperic king of Soissons, ruled the kingdom of the Franks, recalling by name and by valour his grandfather Lothar, the first of that name … Therefore under Lothar the second, Theodard, advanced from boyhood to the parting of the ways of adolescence, despised the broad road, on which he saw many that were called straying off to the left; and chose the narrow way, by which the few elect make for life on the right: for, made over by the devotion of his parents to monastic discipline, he willingly bore the light yoke of Christ. From what is subjoined it is manifest that the monastic life of St. Theodard is set by Sigebert at the time in which Lothar II, after a long reign in Neustria, held the monarchy of all Francia. If Sigebert will have the Saint to have been born then also, and takes adolescence for the age which begins from the entrance upon the fifteenth year, his reported statements can scarcely be reconciled with his own Chronicle, which establishes that Lothar was monarch for thirteen years only, namely from the year 618 to 631. But it is now agreed among the learned that Sigebert erred in his Chronicle, and that the monarchy of Lothar II lasted fifteen years, to be reckoned from the year 613 to 628, in which he departed from among the living. It is easily understood, indeed, how within those fifteen years St. Theodard could both be born, and come from boyhood to the parting of the ways of adolescence, and be handed over by his parents to some monastery, to be imbued with monastic discipline: but what is there to persuade us that all these things happened within the same period? I should say that the Saint was brought into the light before Lothar in the year 613 obtained the monarchy of all Francia, if the narrative of Sigebert to be given presently were true, from which it is made out that St. Theodard as a monk attached himself to St. Arnulf before he resigned the bishopric of Metz in the year 625: but that whole narrative is exceedingly suspect to me, which I now set before the reader for his weighing.
[10] and then attached himself to SS. Arnulf, Eligius and John the Lamb, Among those by whose example or teaching Theodard emulated the better gifts … pre-eminent was Arnulf, from mayor of the palace bishop of Metz, Eligius, from a goldsmith afterwards bishop of Noyon, and John also of Tongeren, from a layman … chosen by God to be a bishop. By imitating such men Theodard made progress in the twofold knowledge: clinging to their side, he was known and dear to the princes of the palace. Already the report of his name had risen to the throne of Dagobert, reigning after his father Lothar, etc. The Acts of St. Arnulf our Bosch diligently illustrated at the eighteenth day of July, who in the preliminary Commentary, §2, disapproves what Sigebert here asserts, namely that that Saint was made bishop of Metz from being mayor of the royal palace. Yet he does not deny that that honour accrued to his episcopate under Dagobert I, since his father Lothar II had made him partner of the kingdom in the year 622, and had set him as king over the Austrasian Franks. In the same place, §3, he shows that St. Arnulf in the year 625, having left the episcopal chair and the court of Dagobert, withdrew into the solitude of the monastery of Remiremont. St. Eligius, a most skilful goldsmith, as St. Ouen, bishop of Rouen, testifies in his Life, which will be given at the first of December, practised his art at Paris before he was set over the church of Noyon, and there or in the neighbourhood frequented the court of Lothar II, and then of his son Dagobert I, after he had succeeded to the monarchy of his father, who died in the year 628. In the same times flourished St. John the Lamb, bishop of Maastricht, whom from the chair to this
city, the see having been transferred from Tongeren, Sigebert calls bishop of Tongeren. Of him we treated at the twenty-fifth of July.
[11] which seems fictitious. The Saints just mentioned were all created bishops from the lay state. One of them, Arnulf, professed the monastic life after he had renounced the episcopate in the year 625. But of that Saint Sigebert seems manifestly to treat not as a monk but as a bishop. Therefore St. Theodard, who entered a monastery on the boundary between boyhood and adolescence, was not taught the discipline of the monastic life by any of those three Saints. Yet, that he might be able to behold their virtues face to face and imitate them, Sigebert brought the holy Youth out of his monastery and joined him to their side, although they had fixed their dwellings in places widely apart, St. Arnulf at Metz, St. Eligius at Paris, and St. John the Lamb at Maastricht. Clinging to their side, he says, he was known and dear to the princes of the palace. Here it should have been added that our young Monk became known to and was in the affections of the princes of the royal palace: that is, he attached himself to SS. Eligius and Arnulf, who dwelt among them very much, the latter in Austrasia, the former in Neustria; where also the report of the virtues of St. Theodard is said to have risen to the throne of Dagobert, reigning after his father Lothar. Among writers older than Sigebert I find none of all these things; which accordingly I judge to have been devised by him in order somehow to adorn the Saint's memory. Some moderns, who say that St. Theodard learned every rule of right from St. John the Lamb, bishop of Maastricht, have followed Sigebert too easily.
[12] Of the life of our Saint lived before his episcopate the very ancient anonymous author has transmitted nothing to the memory of posterity, He was the disciple of St. Remaclus, and in the monastery of Stavelot except that he was nobly born of his parents, but more nobly conducted himself, and lived under the discipline of St. Remaclus, of which Sigebert is silent. The clergy marvelled, says the anonymous author concerning St. Theodard promoted to the episcopate, that he would so suddenly be conformed to his venerable master, holy Remaclus, whom they had very lately seen subject to the governance of discipleship. That St. Theodard was the disciple of St. Remaclus is also attested in his Life by Notger, bishop of Liège, and by Hariger. Notger's words may be read in tome 1 of September, page 678, number 37. Hariger, in Chapeaville, at the end of chapter 50 and the beginning of the following, has this concerning St. Remaclus: He was the founder of very many monasteries, and was the father and instructor of many disciples. Of whose number was the blessed Theodard, formed by him in ecclesiastical discipline, and designated by him as his own successor [*], and at the last distinguished with the crown of martyrdom. In the Life of St. Hadelin written by the aforesaid Notger, tome 1 of February, page 374, number 8, the following occur: In the Catalogue of illustrious men which is there (in the church of Stavelot) constantly displayed above the altar, this is found inserted: These, it says, are the names of those who with blessed Remaclus began to inhabit the monastery of Stavelot: St. Remaclus, St. Hadelin, St. Theodard, etc.
[13] St. Remaclus was the first abbot of four monasteries. he led the monastic life, which he probably undertook at Solignac or Cugnon. He ruled first Solignac in Aquitaine and in the diocese of Limoges, which was erected before the year 638, the year of the death of Dagobert I, by St. Eligius, afterwards bishop of Noyon; then Cugnon in the present duchy of Luxembourg on the river Semois, which was founded by St. Sigebert III, son of Dagobert I and king of Austrasia, between the year 644 and 648; finally Stavelot together with Malmedy, situated on the borders of the duchies of Luxembourg, Limburg and Jülich, which were founded by the same most pious king Sigebert after St. Remaclus in the year 650 or the following had been raised to the see of Maastricht. More concerning those four monasteries may be seen in the Commentary on St. Remaclus, §§3 and 6. I do not think it can be called into doubt that St. Theodard was among the very first of all who inhabited the monastery of Stavelot or of Malmedy. In the ancient document which in the preceding number I adduced from Notger, he is said to have begun with St. Remaclus to inhabit the monastery of Stavelot. But now, whom is St. Remaclus rather to be thought to have established in the new monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy than his former disciples in the monastery of Cugnon or of Solignac? Hence it becomes probable to me that St. Theodard laid the foundations of the religious life in one or the other. Sigebert of Gembloux, who asserts that the Saint undertook the monastic life in the time of king Lothar II, under whom neither of the two monasteries just mentioned yet existed, and when he had scarcely, or not even scarcely, passed out of boyhood, has no authority with me; since I see well enough that from mere conjectures he builds up various things less probable concerning the Saint, nay contradicts the clear testimonies of the ancients, as will presently appear.
[14] He was not the first abbot of the monastery of Stavelot or of Malmedy: The anonymous monk of Stavelot, in the Acts of St. Remaclus written about the middle of the ninth century and published at the third of September, chapter 2, number XI, and Notger in the Commentary prefixed to them, §6, number 48, as also Hariger in Chapeaville, chapter 56, expressly testify that the government of both newly built monasteries, of Stavelot as well as of Malmedy, was committed by royal authority to St. Remaclus the bishop. It will suffice here to have reported the words of Hariger alone, since the words of the others may be found in our Work at the places indicated. When therefore the oratories of both monasteries had been completed, the blessed bishop sets out at the royal admonition to dedicate them to the Lord, and, the benediction having been solemnly performed, he received the charge of both and of the district from the royal highness. Sigebert the biographer invents things manifestly repugnant to the testimonies of Hariger and of Notger and the anonymous of Stavelot, who assert the same; for after he had brought in the mention of St. Sigebert, the founder of both monasteries, and of Grimoald the mayor of the palace, who was his helper in that pious work, he presently subjoins: These, having taken counsel with Remaclus bishop of the Tongerians and Cunibert bishop of Cologne, to whose dioceses those places belonged, found no one more fit than Theodard, whom they might set over those places, that he might lay a spiritual foundation upon the chief corner stone, Christ Jesus. But Theodard, knowing that a burden and not an honour is laid upon one who does not know how to preside, preferred to be rather than to be called abbot, that being made all things to all men he might gain all. The author of the Chronicle of Liège, which Martène gives, carried down to the year 1192, in tome 3 of the Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, from column [ ]; and other more recent writers, who declare either that Malmedy is situated in the diocese of Cologne, or Stavelot in that of Maastricht, now Liège, or with Sigebert that both monasteries were administered by St. Theodard as their first abbot, ought by no means to detain the reader; since we must adhere to the older authors praised above, from whose statements it is evident that the first abbot of both monasteries was St. Remaclus.
[15] those are refuted who make the Saint Le Cointe and Mabillon, each in his own Annals — the latter in the Benedictine Annals at the year 652, the former in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 653 — Denis de Sainte-Marthe, tome 3 of the Gallia Christiana, columns 825, 939 and following, and other moderns will have it that St. Theodard was the second abbot of the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy. They refer their origin to the year 648, and assert that St. Remaclus presided over the monks whom he had gathered there until he ascended the see of Maastricht, and that St. Theodard was substituted for him in the government of the said monasteries at once, or, as Le Cointe and Denis de Sainte-Marthe suppose, after a very short interval of time. But they deny that the episcopate was entered upon by St. Remaclus before the year 652, because St. Amand had not laid it down earlier. But I contend that both were done in the year 650, or certainly not later than 651, and I prove it thus. In the month of October in the year 649 a council was held at Rome against the Monothelites under St. Martin I, who transmitted its Acts to St. Amand, to be subscribed by the bishops of Gaul assembling in one place, and admonished him to exhort king Sigebert to send bishops to the City, who should ratify the legation of the Apostolic See to the emperor Constans and carry the Acts of the same council to him. Who would not infer from this that the Pontiff's letters to St. Amand, in which these things are read, published by Labbe in tome VI of the Councils from column 383, were written immediately after the celebration of the said council in the year 649? In the same letters the Pontiff dissuades St. Amand from renouncing his episcopate on account of the incontinence and contumacy of his clergy. Nothing indeed can be said more agreeable to the sanctity and apostolic labours of St. Amand than that he for a year or two employed every art which seemed likely to profit for the correcting of his clergy, and at last seized upon the plan of resigning his episcopate, when he saw that he was making no progress by his labours and cares: and therefore he must be reckoned to have undertaken the administration of the church of Maastricht in the year 647, or certainly not long before that. But Baudemund, the disciple of St. Amand, in tome 1 of February, page 352, column 2, testifies that his master did not sit longer than about three years: therefore the resignation of the episcopate by St. Amand and the succession of St. Remaclus are by no means to be deferred beyond the year 651, but are to be bound to that year or to the preceding, 650. This opinion, often handed down in our Work, from which I find that Le Cointe, Mabillon and others departed without being supported by any solid reason or authority, I have thought must here be established, because from the admitted truth of it and from an argument presently to be taken from elsewhere it follows that the same authors are deceived when they say that, upon St. Remaclus being made bishop of Maastricht, St. Theodard was at once, or a little after, set as abbot over the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy.
[16] Henschen, in tome 1 of February, page 235, number 20, brings forward a diploma the second abbot of both monasteries, by which king Sigebert grants certain revenues to the abbeys of Stavelot and Malmedy, and declares void any donation of them which he had made to anyone else in former years, while he was still of tender age — that is, while he had not yet reached the lawful age of twenty-one years, or the fourteenth year of his reign, as is gathered from what he next subjoins: Since also otherwise, he says, it is known to have been agreed with very many of our faithful, that when by the Lord's help we came in our reign to the lawful age, the cessions of that [*] whereby our serenity had granted anything out of our hereditary treasury should thenceforward, that is, from the fourteenth year of our reign, be, in God's name, firm. The fourteenth year of king Sigebert began to run from the death of his father Dagobert I, who departed this life in the month of January of the year 638, in the same month of January of the year 651: about which time also Sigebert completed the lawful age of twenty-one years: for he was born about the beginning of the year 630. But when the same king holds his donations ratified from the fourteenth year of his reign, he by no means signifies that he issued the diploma in which this is contained in that same year; nay, from the fourteenth year of his reign down to the time when the diploma was issued some years
are hinted to have elapsed, when he says that before former years he had been established under tender age, by which he beyond all doubt understands that age which he passed until the fourteenth year of his reign: he would certainly have said, if he had granted the diploma in that very year, before this year, or, if he had issued it in the fifteenth year of his princedom, before the former year, and not before former years. Who was abbot of Stavelot and Malmedy at the time when Sigebert issued his diploma, the king himself manifests in these words in that same diploma of his: Therefore the holy and venerable monasteries named Stavelot and Malmedy, where the venerable man Remaclus, bishop and abbot, under Christ's auspices, is seen to preside, etc.
[17] hold that he was abbot. Now I argue thus: St. Remaclus, as I showed at number 15, sat at Maastricht, or at least began to sit, in the year 651, in which Sigebert began the fourteenth year of his reign in the month of January; but in his often-mentioned diploma, which was drawn up some years after that, as I also seem to myself to have sufficiently proved, it is clearly expressed that St. Remaclus the bishop presided as abbot over the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy: therefore the opinion of Le Cointe, Mabillon and others is to be rejected, who say that, when St. Remaclus was taken up to the episcopate of Maastricht, St. Theodard was at once, or a little after, constituted abbot of both monasteries. Since my adversaries follow the most common opinion, which establishes that St. Remaclus did not lay down the charge of the church of Maastricht until after the death of king Sigebert, the argument which I have opposed to them would retain all its force even if I should grant that the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy were founded before the episcopate of St. Remaclus. But this too they assert without any solid foundation, against Hariger, Notger, and the anonymous of Stavelot, who is much older than either, to whom I again refer the reader. To some slight arguments on which they rely an answer has been given in tome 1 of September, in the Commentary on St. Remaclus, numbers 22 and 49.
Annotataread successor*.
illæ, quas* (those cessions which).
§ III. He becomes bishop — was it after the death of king Sigebert? The instruction of St. Lambert; the time, cause and place of his martyrdom; his cult.
[ ] [Perhaps he was the vicar of St. Remaclus at Stavelot and Malmedy, whom he succeeds] Bartholomew Fisen, in the Flowers of the church of Liège, in the elogium of St. Theodard, says: When Remaclus had laid the foundations of the monastic life at Stavelot and Malmedy, and was constantly compelled to betake himself to his own church and to the business of his episcopate, Theodard seemed most especially suitable to water himself the new nursery of both families which Remaclus had planted. He did this with such vigilance and such desire for the divine honour, that when at last Remaclus, having laid down his episcopate, withdrew into the solitude of Stavelot, to govern both those religious communities, Theodard succeeded him at Maastricht: of whom there was hope that he would bear the episcopate with that greatness of mind and religion with which he had filled the place of Remaclus at Stavelot. I shall willingly admit all these things, provided it be supposed that St. Remaclus was bishop of Maastricht and at the same time abbot of Stavelot and Malmedy, and that St. Theodard exercised only a vicarious care of those monasteries, dependent upon him: and that this was committed to our Saint by St. Remaclus, who on account of his episcopal duties had to reside at Maastricht, receives some probability from the fact that he afterwards judged him more fit than the rest to preside over the church of Maastricht: for when he had obtained from the king that another should succeed him in the episcopal see, since he was about to withdraw into the hermitage of Stavelot, he set before the king and the nobles the sufficiently approvable life of St. Theodard, and designated him by name to fill his own place and to be substituted after him in his see, says Notger in the Acts of St. Hadelin published at the third of February, chapter 1, number 3. Hear Hariger also in the Life of St. Remaclus in Chapeaville, chapter 57: Therefore the blessed priest, eagerly setting about the solitude of a more retired life, which he had always had in his desire, by permission of the king and the princes and with the assent of the clergy committed to him and of all the people, appointed St. Theodard, a man of approvable life, to succeed him, and withdrew into the monastery of Stavelot, where, removed from secular cares, he might more freely be at leisure for God.
[19] The more famous writers everywhere hold, and it is asserted in various places in our Work, [in the episcopate, and whether this was done after the death of king St. Sigebert is called into doubt,] that St. Remaclus resigned the episcopate in the year 660 or even later. Nevertheless I doubt whether he did this after the death of king St. Sigebert or while he was still alive; who certainly did not prolong his life to the year 660, as is now confessed by all. The strongest and only argument which can be objected to me in my doubt I shall myself set forth. In Mabillon, Benedictine Century 2, St. Trudo, in his Life which Donatus the deacon wrote toward the end of the eighth century, is said to have been sent to St. Chlodulf bishop of Metz by St. Remaclus the bishop, and to have returned to him, when he was still discharging the episcopate, after very many years spent in the city of Metz. But St. Chlodulf was consecrated bishop of Metz in the month of April in the year 654, as Pagi holds, or 655, as our Bosch prefers, tome IV of July, page 430. Therefore St. Remaclus presided for very many years after the year 654 or 655, and consequently also after the death of king Sigebert, whom the now more common opinion of the learned, to which I assent, holds to have died not later than the Kalends of February in the year 656. Against Donatus I set the anonymous author of the unpublished Life of St. Theodard: who, since he expressly testifies that he succeeded St. Remaclus in the episcopate of Maastricht under king Sigebert, and since I cannot prove that the same anonymous author imposed upon the reader in his prologue with these words: Of which college of holy Martyrs there arose, not many seasons since, the bishop Theodard — who suffered about the year 668 — I cannot but doubt whether we should stand by the authority of Donatus, who is later than the martyrdom of our Saint by a hundred years and more, and from whose statements it follows that St. Remaclus held the see of Maastricht after the death of Sigebert. My doubt is increased by the anonymous monk of Stavelot, an author of about the middle of the ninth century, who, as can be shown from the Life of St. Remaclus written by him, judges that he renounced the episcopate under Sigebert. The same is openly handed down by Notger and Hariger and very many others. The writers just praised supply arguments against those who contend that St. Theodard was the second abbot of Stavelot and Malmedy which would indeed have great force, if it were certain that the see of Maastricht was left by St. Remaclus in the reign of Sigebert: but since the authority of Donatus — to which nevertheless I am allowed to doubt whether we should rather adhere — makes the matter uncertain, I should have brought forward those arguments in the preceding section in vain against the opposing party, which asserts that St. Remaclus sat at Maastricht for many years after the death of Sigebert; and therefore I judged that that opinion must be refuted here, as I also hinted that I had done at number 17.
[20] The consecration of the church of Saint-Trond; Denis de Sainte-Marthe, in tome III of the Gallia Christiana, column 825, says: In the year 664 the church of the monastery of Sarchinium, built by Trudo, was dedicated. But by whom? Concerning the dedication itself Amatus [*] the deacon, the first writer of the Life of St. Trudo, is altogether silent; Hariger too is silent in the Life of St. Remaclus. Notger attributes that ceremony to Remaclus in his Life; but Theodoric, a writer of the end of the eleventh century, attributes it to Theodard in the Life of Trudo in Surius at the twenty-third of November, whom the author of the Chronicle of Saint-Trond followed. Perhaps both, Remaclus and Theodard his successor in the government of the church of Maastricht, were present at the dedication, just as the bishops Amand and Autbert are said to have lent their aid to the dedication of the cell of St. Ghislain. In tome 1 of September, page 683, number 55, the consecration of the church erected by St. Trudo at Sarchinium, which place is now called Saint-Trond, is attached to the same year 664: and this reason is added, namely that in the Chronicle of Saint-Trond it is read that that church was dedicated by St. Theodard bishop of Maastricht on the third of the Ides of October, and that this day did not fall on a Sunday during the whole time in which he presided, except in the said year 664. But that is true if St. Remaclus resigned the episcopate in the year 660 or 661, as is there asserted, and is not denied by me: but if he did so while Sigebert was alive, say in the year 655, St. Theodard was certainly sitting in the year 659, in which the thirteenth day of October was likewise a Sunday.
[21] his excellent instruction St. Theodard is called by the ancient anonymous biographer the master of St. Lambert, a youth most richly adorned with the gifts of nature and of grace; how much he advanced under his mastership in virtue, in the sacred sciences and in all uprightness of manners, learn from the authors of his Life, Godescalc the deacon and Stephen bishop of Liège. The former wrote about the year 730, and in Mabillon, Benedictine Century III, part 1, page 70, has this: Passing beyond the years of boyhood, he bore the age of adolescence with the diligence of old age.. At the same time, in the town of Maastricht, the supreme bishop Theodard presided over the pontifical see by the dispensation of divine providence. Straightway his father commended him to the aforesaid Bishop, to be instructed in the divine teachings and in monastic discipline in the royal court. By profession St. Theodard was a monk: was St. Lambert also, who is here said to have been instructed by him in monastic discipline? To examine this belongs more nearly to him who is to treat of St. Lambert at the seventeenth of September. I go on therefore with Godescalc: For he was a wise youth, lovely in appearance, affable in conversation: in an upright manner of life he began to serve both with the Bishop and in the royal house. Also, though he was outstanding in form, strong and swift, agile and very steadfast in war, bright in mind, adorned in appearance, grounded in charity, chastity and humility, he also gave himself to the work [*] of reading. In the end he deserved to find such favour in the sight of the Bishop that he would have chosen to adopt him as it were a son, heir and successor to himself, if it had been lawful for him because of the canonical institution.
[22] of St. Lambert: The praises of the excellent teacher Theodard and of his disciple Lambert Stephen, bishop of Liège at the beginning of the tenth century, thus celebrates in a notable elogium in the codex of our museum marked Q Ms. 5: At the same time the holy [*] bishop Theodard, and the most illustrious martyr of Christ that was to be, a man full of priestly reverence, and a priest to be beatified before the divine gaze, administered the episcopal dignity in the aforesaid town of Maastricht. To him the memorable youth Lambert, most renowned in nobility, most elegant in form of body, is commended to be educated in the royal court, that like a precious stone he might be polished by manifold trials, and might become fit for the heavenly ornaments. Then indeed the dove of Christ without gall of bitterness, namely Lambert, that praiseworthy foster-son, cleaving skilfully to the mastership of the aforesaid Bishop, began to venerate him as a lord, to love him as a most dear father, and in all his acts to obey him according to the Apostle's precept, as became a servant of the Lord. For indeed from the fellowship of so great a Father he was more abundantly filled with grace, more richly endowed with wisdom, and there was daily increased in him the
abundance of merits. Which the same Bishop, contemplating in silence and searching out by subtle inquiry, understood how great and of what sort he would be; and therefore he carried over his whole self into love of him, as of a beloved heir and a most welcome successor. For having obtained the love of the great Priest, and being taught to hold very closely the admonitions of the Scriptures, he fulfilled the twofold precept of charity, loving the Lord with his whole mind, and embracing his neighbour with entire love as himself… But after holy Theodard, slain by the wicked, had received the palm of blessedness, the faithful company of the people of Maastricht, widowed of their loving Shepherd, began vehemently to seek out another like him in sanctity, whom they might put in his place, etc.
[23] Henschen, in tome 1 of February, page 235, brings forward a diploma of Childeric II, king of Austrasia, his passion in which mention is made of our holy bishop Theodard. The chronological notes of the diploma, which are there omitted, the same Henschen gives in the Exegesis on the bishopric of Tongeren and Maastricht before tome VII of May, number 86. They are also reported in the Commentary on St. Remaclus at the third of September, number 60. It is well to adduce them in this place also: Given when the month of September had made six days, in the eighth year of the reign of the lord king Childeric. At Maastricht, happily. Le Cointe at the year 667, number 29, Pagi at the year 658, number 4, and Louis Du Four in the Annals of the Franks at the end of tome III of the Writers of Gallic and Frankish affairs, page 690, attach the sixth day of September, which falls in the eighth year of king Childeric, to the year of Christ 667; in which year also the diploma is asserted to have been drawn up in the Exegesis and Commentary praised above. In Le Cointe's opinion the Saint could have survived alive one year only. In Austrasia, he says at the year 668, number XI, Theodard bishop of Maastricht underwent martyrdom in this year, on the fourth of the Ides of September. The day is noted in the ecclesiastical Tables. The year, concerning which various writers have brought forward so many and such differing opinions, can easily be gathered. That Theodard reached this year (668) is taught by the diploma which Childeric issued in the previous year on the sixth day of September; for Theodard, who was then alive, did not die on the fourth day after; seeing that the ordinance is read to have been given at Maastricht, and Theodard was slain near Speyer, when he was setting out to king Childeric, who was far distant from Maastricht. But the martyrdom of the same Theodard cannot be deferred beyond this year; for Lambert succeeded him in the episcopate while Childeric was staying in Austrasia, whose journey into Neustria after the death of his brother Chlothar we shall set forth in the following year.
[24] to be bound to the year 668 or the following; Le Cointe rightly holds that the Saint did not suffer before the year 668: but he is deceived when he denies that it could have happened later; for Pagi at the year 668 from number 6, and Johann Georg von Eckhart in his Commentaries on the affairs of Eastern Francia, book 14, number 14 and following, prove at length that Chlothar III, king of Neustria and Burgundy, died not in the year 669 but toward the close of 670, and that Childeric II his brother did not come from Austrasia into Neustria to take up the monarchy of all Francia until, for some short time after the death of the same Chlothar, his other brother Theuderic III had reigned in Neustria and Burgundy. St. Theodard therefore could also in the year 669 have set out to Childeric, who was staying in Austrasia, and fallen a martyr on the journey, and St. Lambert could then have succeeded him under the same king of Austrasia at the end of the said year 669 or the beginning of [ ]. Yet more writers fix the passion of our Saint in the year 668, whom I have followed, adding the word about, lest the following year should be excluded. It is certain, as is clear from what was said at number 2, that St. Lambert presided over the church of Maastricht for forty years; in whose honour a basilica had already been erected at Liège before Pippin of Herstal departed this life in the year 714: for his son Grimoald was slain in it by Rantgar, while he was pouring forth prayers for the health of his sick father, as the continued Chronicle of Fredegar the Scholastic testifies in Ruinart, column 671. I mention these things lest anyone should easily defer the martyrdom of St. Theodard as far as the year 670, even though he may perhaps find that nothing else stands in the way: for if St. Theodard had reached that year, St. Lambert would likewise have to be said to have reached the year 710, being slain after an episcopate of 40 years in the same month of September as our Saint. But the year 710 is so near to the year 714, in which the basilica already set up to St. Lambert at Liège was to be seen, that it is rather to be maintained that this saint suffered in the year 709 or in 708, which I prefer.
[25] to be bound; The body of St. Lambert was transferred into the said basilica by St. Hubert in the thirteenth year of his episcopate, as is read in his Life written by his disciple, in the year of Christ 721 or thereabouts. The people of Liège keep the yearly memory of that translation on the twenty-eighth of April, which day in the year 720 fell on a Sunday. Hence Pagi at the year 658, number 5, and at 698, number 1, believed that the same translation was made in the year and on the day just mentioned; and that it might be understood that St. Hubert was then in the thirteenth year of his episcopate, he bound the death of St. Lambert to the year 707, and the martyrdom of St. Theodard to the year 667, denying that he suffered on the tenth of September, although his birthday is celebrated on that day. Pagi was led thus to order the times by the error whereby he supposed the translation of St. Lambert to have been performed of old on the twenty-eighth day of April. But on that day his memory only began to be kept in the year 1141 under Albero II, bishop of Liège, as Giles, monk of Orval, testifies in Chapeaville, tome 2, chapter 38: It was moreover sanctioned, he says, by episcopal authority, with the approval of the church of Liège itself, that on the fourth of the Kalends of May a solemn memory should henceforth be kept both of that triumph over the castle of Bouillon, stormed by the help of St. Lambert, and of the translation by which the same martyr was carried over from Maastricht to Liège by blessed Hubert; because on the eighth of the Kalends of January, the day on which the translation was first made, the due honour could not be celebrated on account of the vigil of the Lord's Nativity. Since therefore the body of St. Lambert was not translated on the twenty-eighth of April, what reason can there be for denying that the tenth day of September was St. Theodard's last? It could not belong to the year 667, as is clear from the words of Le Cointe reported above: therefore it is to be attached to the year 668 at least, and consequently the passion of St. Lambert and his translation must be deferred to times later than those which Pagi determined.
[26] Childeric had already issued the diploma praised above on the sixth day of September in the eighth year of his reign, the cause the year of Christ 667, at Maastricht, and had also, if I am not mistaken, departed from that city, when it was discovered by St. Theodard — to use the very words of the anonymous biographer — that certain persons held estates from his fathers less justly. But turning over this care for the ill-diminished possessions of the church within the secrets of his heart, he began to doubt which he would rather do: whether to let them remain as he had found them, or to go on in this business to address the royal ears. At length, trusting in the Lord his protector, and not fearing what man might do to him, he stood by his resolve and set out upon the journey to the king. He had already passed beyond the village of his diocese, and had fixed his step, still amid good revenues, in the district of Alliæsedem, as the inhabitants call it by that name; when suddenly a pestilent wedge of robbers, emerging from the lurking-places of their pits, rises up, and, snatching up the points of their lances, rushed upon the Blessed one; and after they had made an end of him with many wounds, they sought again as quickly as they might the pits of their hiding-places. Of the word Alliæsedem, corrupted in our transcript, we shall speak again presently. But of what sort were the robbers who killed St. Theodard? Were they robbers of the ecclesiastical goods, for the recovery of which our Saint was going to king Childeric? So Anselm, canon of Liège, expressly affirms in his elogium of him: He, while he goes to address the royal ears on behalf of the goods of the church entrusted to him, and to demand help against the invaders of the church's estates, in a certain forest which is called Biwalt, not far from the city of the Nemetes, which by the usual name is now called Speyer, was suddenly hemmed in on every side BY THOSE VERY ROBBERS OF HIS OWN CHURCH, and, his companions fleeing away from him in every direction, he himself, innocent, was there butchered. Sigebert of Gembloux likewise does not distinguish the Saint's slayers from the unjust possessors of the goods of the church of Maastricht: Who knowing, he says, that justice would in nothing answer for them, if a controversy over the goods of the church which they had seized were argued before the courtiers, heap evils upon evils, and out of the peril of despair plot the death of the innocent Bishop, and diligently watch his journey, lay snares for him, and, having intercepted him, destroy him with a cruel slaughter. Therefore, according to Anselm and Sigebert, whom nearly all the more recent writers follow, St. Theodard is to be held a true martyr: since his undertaking of the defence of the right and property of the church before the king was the cause of the death inflicted on him. I likewise honour the Saint as a true martyr, because the anonymous biographer manifestly does not oppose that pious opinion, although he seems rather to hint that he was slain by men accustomed to live by brigandage and plunder.
[27] At the head of this Commentary I set down that St. Theodard suffered among the Nemetes in Germany. Their chief town is now called Speyer. Not far from this city, in a certain forest and of the arena which is called Biwalt, Anselm writes that the Saint was slain. In some maps which I have consulted, the wood Bienwald is marked in that region which the Nemetes once inhabited, namely in the Lower Palatinate and the diocese of Speyer, on the left bank of the Rhine, between the rivers Queich, which, flowing past Landau, enters the Rhine at Germersheim, and the Lauter, which divides Alsace, taken more strictly, from the Lower Palatinate. The tract which lies between the two rivers was once part of Alsace, to which even now many reckon it. Therefore Sigebert of Gembloux is not contrary to Anselm when he asserts that the Saint underwent martyrdom after he had entered Alsace. He had already, he says, passed far beyond the bounds of his diocese, and had fixed his step, still amid good revenues, in the district which they commonly call Alisatia; and behold, a wedge of the enemies of God, etc. The anonymous biographer, whose style Sigebert polished, has it thus in our faulty transcript: He had already passed beyond the village of his diocese, and had fixed his step, still amid good revenues, in the district of Alliæsedem, as the inhabitants call it by that name; when suddenly a pestilent wedge of robbers, etc. In the codex of our museum Q Ms. 5, for Alliæsedem is read Alliesede. In both places I believe the word to be corrupted from Alsatia, or, as it was once written, Alisatia, Elisatia, etc. In this region, known under that name before the eighth century, our Saint is thus announced by the Paris Martyrology printed in the year 1727: In Alsace, of St. Theodard, bishop of Maastricht, who, while he was going to the court of the king of Austrasia, was butchered by the unjust possessors of the goods of his church.
[28] of his martyrdom; a chapel founded on the place of his first burial; In the anonymous author I read that the bishop of the city of the Vangiones, which is now called Worms, having learned of the slaying of St. Theodard and of the miracles by which he presently began to grow famous, congratulated himself thus far, that he had been made an end of by martyrdom on the very border of his own diocese. Sigebert of Gembloux also writes, from the anonymous author, that he was crowned in that same diocese; who perhaps only wished to signify that the Saint was put to martyrdom in a place subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop of the Vangiones, although enclosed within the bounds of the bishopric of the Nemetes, now of Speyer. This I do not deny, nor does it conflict with what has been said before. And indeed, why could not the tract of the district of the Nemetes in which the Saint suffered once have been subject to the bishop of the Vangiones, just as at that very time the village of Sarchinium, which afterwards grew into a town called Saint-Trond, belonged to the church of Metz, although it was separated from it by almost the whole bishopric of Maastricht. However the matter may stand, I do not think that I have erred in the preceding number in assigning the arena of the holy Martyr, situated now in the diocese of Speyer. I have been made more secure in this matter by the following note left by Bolland, which I found laid aside at this day. Father Johannes Gamans wrote to me on 2 April 1648 from Ettlingen in the margraviate of Baden: "I have investigated and found the place of the martyrdom of St. Theodard, bishop of Tongeren, if all things do not deceive, to this day most solemnly kept as a place of vows, and consecrated with its own rural chapel on the public road near Landau, an imperial town of the diocese of Speyer." In the map of Matthäus Seutter, two German miles from Landau, near the Bienwald forest, on the public road itself, is marked the place S. Didric, so named from its patron, without doubt St. Theodard. The chapel consecrated to him, which Gamans mentions, is not to be sought elsewhere: nor is the place S. Didric to be distinguished from that which was formerly called Nec; where our Saint, as Sigebert and others hand down, received an honourable burial near the arena of his martyrdom. St. Lambert, before he became bishop of Maastricht, transferred his body thence to Liège: which body Fisen, in the History of the church of Liège, book 15, number 15, says was elevated by St. Hubert and set forth for public veneration.
[29] An anonymous author, in the History of the exhibition of the relics celebrated at Liège in the year 1489, his cult at Liège; his memory in the sacred calendars. in Chapeaville, tome 3, page 206, writes that in the fifth place was shown the shrine of St. Theodard, bishop of Tongeren and martyr, in which his body is contained entire, together with the greater part of the body of St. Magdalberta the virgin, of whom we treated at the seventh day of September. That the relics of both, enclosed in one and the same shrine, were for many centuries past religiously kept in the cathedral church of Liège, Giles, monk of Orval, teaches in the aforesaid Chapeaville, tome 1, page 145. Fullonius, in his History of Liège, concerning bishop Érard de la Marck, who sat from the year 1506 to 1536, says: The bishop's inexhaustible piety and liberality ordered a silver shrine of remarkable mass to be prepared for the body of the divine Theodard, of such exquisite workmanship that craftsmen in all Belgium could scarcely make another of greater value, and they reckon the material to be the smallest part of its worth. The Directory of the church of Liège for the year 1702 thus prescribes the rite under which the Office of our Saint at the tenth of September is to be recited: St. Theodard, bishop and martyr, double; in the cathedral, double of the second class. From various Breviaries of Liège I have learned that the Saint was honoured with a like cult in the cathedral church and throughout the whole diocese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Commemoration is made of him in the ancient printed Breviaries of Tongeren and of St. Gudula at Brussels. The Breviary of St. Servatius at Maastricht, likewise of an old edition, has three proper Lessons concerning St. Theodard. His memory occurs frequently in the Auctaria to the Martyrology of Usuard in Sollier. In the manuscript codices of Antwerp (the largest), Utrecht, Leiden, Louvain, Alberghen and Denmark, likewise in the Cologne and Lübeck editions, the Saint is thus reported: On the same day, the passion of St. Theodard, bishop of Maastricht. He was the successor of blessed Remaclus, and the teacher of holy Lambert. With this the manuscript codices of Brussels and Hagenau agree, and Greven also. Molanus adds: He rests at Liège in the basilica of St. Lambert: but our manuscript Florarium of the Saints continues thus: Who shed his blood for the immunity of his church, shining again with very many miracles, etc. The Roman Martyrology, to pass over the rest, announces the Saint at Liège, where he is venerated, in this manner: At Liège in Belgium [*], of saint Theodard, bishop and martyr, who laid down his life for his sheep, or rather for the defence of the goods of his church, and after his death shone with the grace of miracles.
Annotataread Donatus*.
elsewhere, when there was need*.
* that is, holy.
read Belgica*.
UNPUBLISHED ACTS
by a very ancient anonymous author
From the 's-Hertogenbosch manuscript.
Theodard, bishop of Maastricht, martyr among the Nemetes in Germany (St.)
BHL Number: 8046
A. By a very ancient anonymous author
PROLOGUE.
Since God, the founder of all things, created man for eternal salvation, Almighty God, existing before the ages of the world, by his word, the Paraclete Spirit working with him, founded heaven and earth and the liquid plains a, and adorned them like a wise craftsman with the ornament of innumerable creatures. For to the ranks of the holy Angels, over whom he presides and through whom he distinguishes his judgments, he furnished heaven as a dwelling; the airy heaven also he left for the flock of birds to range through; and the sea he committed to the scaly herd to wander in, as we know from the Psalmist's weaving: The birds of the heaven and the fishes of the sea, that walk through the paths of the sea. Over the earth, indeed, which is the heaviest and most bodily of the elements, he set man by a provident plan, so far as he might suffice for the honour and glory of his name, and might plead the mighty works of God concerning the rest, that is, the irrational creatures. When therefore with such skilful searching, as we have learned from Solomon's discourse, he had weighed all things in measure, weight and number, it presently pleased his almighty Majesty that the man already spoken of should be marvellously made fruitful through the succession of offspring, so that he might fix the gaze of his lights in faith and devotion upon the knowledge of his Creator, and that he might prefer b to make him eternally happy in the pleasant loveliness of paradise. But it happened that at first many attained that loveliness, but more went astray. Then by degrees some of the Saints, burning with the sevenfold globe c of the Spirit, so sighed for that place from which they had received their origin, that not only d the threats of adversaries, but not even the assaults of every kind of death could deter them from turning aside from their right purpose.
[2] [that the deeds of those who attained it are to be published for the profit of others] Meanwhile the true Sun of justice, sending forth the fires of his burning radiance, began to illumine the hearts of those who fear him; who, according to the mention of the blessed Apostle John, enlightens every man coming into this world, and declares that men pass from virtue to virtue by an unspeakable power. If any of the faithful set in a place of rule shall be loath to make known their sayings or deeds for the edification of anyone, he is written down guilty in the divine Volumes, and is judged liable to the word of God: for he is blamed for having hidden whatever would have profited the Church of God; and he is convicted of having withdrawn what he had received to be distributed to all. Concerning this word let us recall the prophet David singing thus: Thy justice, O God, I have not hidden in my heart; I have declared thy truth and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy mercy and thy truth from a great assembly. And for this the faithful steward in what follows humbly prays that the like may be repaid to him: But thou, he says, O Lord, withhold not thy tender mercies from me: and as I have laid open thy way to those who knew it not, for their correction, so, thy grace protecting me, may I always feel thy compassion.
[3] As therefore the household slave who was not even the layer-out of one talent is reproached by the words of the Saviour, because he did not give it to the bankers e at the table; the author strives to show. so without doubt he who knows how to profit others is called to punishment, if the effect do not straightway follow upon his knowledge. Wherefore in the word of the Wise it is plainly cried: Wisdom that is hidden, and treasure that is not seen, what profit is there in either? But by examples of this kind the Saints, strengthened by the Spirit of God in the inner man, unceasingly praised God, who works daily more gloriously in all things, and for the love of their Fashioner [], triumphing marvellously, made over their bodies [] to death, so that their spirits, having neither spot nor wrinkle, might shine white in the day f with their glorious passions. Of whose college there arose, not many seasons since g, the bishop Theodard; concerning whose life and deeds we have thought it worth while to bring forth a certain little spark, and to publish in what order he entered the way of all the earth.
ANNOTATA.
d. Add nullæ (none).
f. Add of the Lord.
* Creator.
* bodies.
CHAPTER I.
The episcopate of Maastricht; his deeds and virtues: going to the king to recover the goods of his church, he is cruelly slain.
[ ] St. Remaclus resigns the government of the church of Maastricht; The renowned a Sigebert, an orthodox king, his father being Dagobert b, governed the palace in the high offices of the kingdom of Austrasia and of the Franks; holy Remaclus also, the precious confessor of the Lord, at that same time administered the pontificate of the church of Tongeren c; when the eternal almighty God, the Wisdom of God the Father together with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, willed to set that same blessed man apart from the cares of secular affairs, and judged it worthy that he, a singular man, as had always been in his mind, should dwell singularly. Without delay the event was at hand for him. The venerable Remaclus went to the king already named d, and set before him the cause which he had vowed at God's prompting e. The king, the divine grace favouring, lending a ready ear, assents to this; f and the whole consent of the wardens of the palace applauded favourably.
[5] Holy Theodard therefore, for whose memory and veneration we have undertaken these things, having as a disciple been formed by the good teacher Remaclus with friendly and kindly admonitions, hardly obtaining it by the intercession of the petition of his master holy Remaclus, is by the king and all the chief men substituted in his bishopric, his disciple St. Theodard succeeds in his episcopate, and as long as g he desired it, the entreaty of the blessed bishop Remaclus obtained its effect. But the seat of the bishopric was then, as it happened, held at Maastricht. Then the bishop Theodard, already spoken of, nobly born of his parents, but more nobly conducting himself, shone with the fame of holy h deeds, so that already he pleased all in common no less than the blessed man Remaclus his predecessor, and the mitre of his office was made firm upon an immovable foundation by the unanimous choice of noble and ignoble, of old and young, and of every sex and age. And without delay, in so great an honour
being advanced, seeing an innumerable harvest but assuredly the fewest of reapers, he understood that he had rightly been raised to it, not merely that he might preside, but that with all the strength of his powers he might most kindly profit all.
[6] who discharges his office excellently; he visits his diocese; Presently, turned in a wonderful manner wholly to the work of God, like a strong athlete, to war down the powers of the air he put on the breastplate of justice, armed himself with the helmet of salvation i, and strengthened himself on every side with the word of God, which is living and effectual and more piercing than any two-edged sword. Marked out with such arms, and turning over in his lofty mind the Apostle's saying, the things that are above, he brought his mind to visit the sheep of his diocese, lest perchance the ancient enemy, ever envious of all good things, who by a thousand arts of harming goes about unceasingly seeking whom he may devour, should through carelessness find an entrance into the sheepfold of Christ. The clergy marvelled that he would so suddenly be conformed to his venerable master holy Remaclus, whom they had very lately seen subject to the governance of discipleship. Let no one doubt, brethren, that these were the works of the Holy Spirit, who, according to the word of the Saviour, breathes where he wills, and cherishes with full charity him whom he prepares as a dwelling for himself.
[7] [he builds and restores churches; he shines with all the virtues that commend a bishop;] Besides those pressing affairs which were outward, his daily solicitude was [for] k all the churches of his diocese, that he might build them in places where they were lacking, or restore them where they had been destroyed by the compelling cruelty of the pagans or by the age of time. Let us pass over very many things; let us recall a few according to the measure of our pen. Blessed Theodard was among the discordant the gentlest restorer of peace, among kinsfolk the excellent cementer of charity, of old men a most approved exhorter that they should persevere in their good purpose, of young men straying from equity through wantonness a most skilful reprover, an open-handed bestower of alms, a most eloquent guardian of widows and orphans, a most willing pursuer of hospitality according to the Apostle: in short, loving all l the brethren alike. He rejoiced always, prayed without ceasing; cheerful with the joyful, mourning with the sorrowing, wealthy with the rich, needy with the poor: he felt the same thing in himself and in others. Why do we prolong the course of our words further? Wholly given to God, such a bishop as the sacred Reading commends, such did he show himself, blameless in life and manners.
[8] to recover the possessions of his church When all these things had been pursued in order, and his affairs alike faithfully reckoned up, it was discovered that certain persons held estates from his fathers less justly. But turning over this care for the ill-diminished possessions of the church within the secrets of his heart, he began to doubt which he would rather do: whether to let them remain as he had found them; or to go on in this business to address the royal ears. At length, trusting in the Lord his protector, and not fearing what man might do to him, he stood by his resolve, that is, that if Christ should assent he would attempt what he had conceived in his mind. Meanwhile the time was now at hand in which the loftiness of the almighty Godhead was weighing in its secret council to crown the just Man, as the event afterwards proved, with the glorious prize of a passion, and to place the most splendid gem of his soul by the hands of the holy Angels in eternal rest, as one that had rightly deserved it.
[9] Bearing care for the clergy committed to him more than for himself, he goes to the king, and on the journey, by robbers, having diligently disposed all his affairs, and having solemnly fulfilled those things which the time and order required, he prepared to visit the presence of the king m. No delay intervened: having gathered the provisions by which he might be sustained on the journey, he set out on the way, as he had arranged, with a very small company. He had already passed beyond the village of his diocese, and had fixed his step, still amid good revenues, in the district of Alliæsedem n, as the inhabitants call it by that name; when suddenly a pestilent wedge of robbers o, emerging from the lurking-places of their pits, rises up, and, snatching up the points of their lances, rushed upon the Blessed one and threatened death. Seeing this, the most holy Man, trusting as always in the Lord, stood still a little, undismayed, and is reported to have used these words.
[10] O citizens [p], what so great madness drives your minds, whom he strives in vain to recall to a sound mind, that, having drawn the bond of despair, you neglect and disown God your Creator, and desire to satisfy the longing of Satan? Do not, my sons, I beseech you, do not claim this so great outrage for your hands. Have, I entreat, the faith of God and peace among you. Peace is serenity of mind, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of heart that knows no fraud; it overcomes the proud, it binds together the slothful; it is acceptable to all; it takes away quarrels, restrains battles, suppresses anger; it is the bar of right direction, the fellowship of charity. Since you have ceased to hold it, seek it again; since you have lost it, look for it: for whoever shall not be found in it is disowned by the heavenly Father, is taken captive by the Son, and stands a stranger to the Holy Spirit. If you have come peaceably, receive these things in your minds, and fix my words in your hearts: but if not, we shall bear all things with a silent mind, as fortune shall bring. But if the time of my calling is hastened, your spear-points do not terrify me. I do not refuse to drink for my Saviour the cup of death, who did not disdain to bear in his body for me the marks of his passion. If God has so disposed in the balance of his equity, let his will be done. Let it suffice me that I have striven thus far. The flock committed and entrusted to me by him I give back; and as for love of him it is a help to fall bravely in death, so may it help me to go forth from the burdensome humanity of this world: it is better to triumph with such a crown: sweet is that victory, to penetrate the heights of the heavens.
[11] Against these things the men of blood are reported to have replied: he is destroyed by a cruel death. What is this superfluous course of words that you make to us, man? Let what you speak be your own. It concerns us nothing. We abhor the knowledge of your paths. Death alone, which strikes with equal foot the towers of kings and the cottages of the poor [q], stands at hand before you. And no wonder; since, according to the sentence of the Lord, the devil, envious of all good things, took away the word from their heart, lest believing they should be saved. Pitiable then was it to behold the holy Man: whom, like a most gentle lamb, they assail with the rapacity of wolves, and, loading him with insults, cast him to the ground; they cut the crown [r] of his head into fragments, and sacrilegiously squander all that they had brought with them, and as quickly as they may seek again the pits of their hiding-places. Thus did the blessed Bishop end his pleading, thus did he strive, thus, turning his eyes to the stars, did he render his soul to the bright constellations of the heavens.
ANNOTATA.
p. The long speech of the Saint to his slayers, which is here recited, is not probable.
q. Neither is it credible that these words were returned by the assassins.
r. Sigebert of Gembloux, in the Life of the Saint to be published below, sets forth this passage thus: They cut into fragments the head anointed with holy oil.
CHAPTER II.
Miracles; honourable burial; translation to Liège.
[ ] [A woman striking her maidservant, because she had given a thread to join together the parts of the severed sacred head,] Meanwhile of his companions standing about there was one who, since he would not suffer the holy remains of his blessed body to lie cast down, thought it fitting to gather them and fit part to part. A marvellous thing indeed happened, worthy to be heard and told. Since the boy had not bands enough to bind up the Martyr's head, and his anxious mind was divided this way and that upon the matter, he thought it best to go to the farmstead which was nearest, that by carrying off some thread thence he might be able to supply this need. Hesitating not at all, he enters the path: as he went he found a certain poor woman occupied in the care of pasturing sheep, whom he thus addresses with his speech: Woman, let what I ask not seem to you out of place: I beg you, take care to give your assent to my petition the more quickly. Grant one thread of your work to bind the head of my bishop Theodard, still warm, cruelly slain by men of blood. At these words the frail woman, terrified, her hair stood on end, and her voice stuck in her throat. At last, recovering her breath, she tearfully cries out against the most wicked deed with a voice that beat upon the heavens; and to him who stood importunately by her she answered thus: A dreadful necessity, good young man, as you declare, has driven you hither; but it is not in my right to bestow on you what you ask: for the day's task which I work for the mistress of the house, whose servant I am, I render at evening. And if it be found less than customary, I know assuredly that I shall not go unpunished.
[13] At length, overcome by the prayers of him who besought her, although she knew that an enormous danger threatened her from her mistress, [loses her sight, which she recovers at the Saint's body, being enlightened by a heavenly light.] she gave up of her own accord what was asked. The man therefore, rejoicing that he had obtained what he sought without difficulty, took again the road by which he had come. And when, anxious for his Lord, he was now being borne headlong at a continuous run, it happened — marvellous to see! — that he beheld two lights sparkling with globes of flame, which, set on either side, shone upon the head and feet of the holy Martyr. Meanwhile, the day being now closed, the evening a was composing itself in Olympus, when the aforesaid girl was bringing back the sheep from pasture to the folds. But when, being summoned, she did not render the fair measure of her spinning according to her former custom, she felt grievously upon her head the blow of her striking mistress.
Straightway the divine help of the blessed Man was at hand: and the mistress of the house suffered the loss of both her eyes. Indeed the pain of her eyes, descending deeper to her vitals, being inwardly touched with grief of heart, compelled her to repent. She seeks pardon, and prays to be led to the body of the holy Man: she offered the better gifts which she had for appeasing him; and received her eyes marvellously restored.
[14] [The people celebrating the funeral rites in throngs, St. Theodard is buried and shines with miracles.] These things therefore being done, the city set upon a mountain could no longer lie hidden. The messenger of fame, than which nothing is swifter, like the light winds, is spread to the places lying round about; and to the blessed coffin the whole region runs together from every sex and age, like bees to the hives. There arises the noise of mourners; the cry goes up to heaven: it is cried by all that a modest and just Man had closed his last day in a wicked slaughter at the hands of criminals. But again they consoled one another in turn, because for the common salvation of their own people he had obtained the palm of martyrdom in their neighbourhood. Now those who are present uncover the precious pearl of his body; they dry the wounds with soft linen; they lay the shattered and severed limbs in a bier, and also cast very many coverings over them. Then part of them go beneath the bier they are hallowing, part go before and point out the level roads, and, according to the agreement of the mistress of the house, they arrange a tomb for him in the place which is called Alliæ b. Then, the funeral rites duly celebrated, they most fittingly commit his holy limbs to the earth. And that he was there the worker of illustrious works and signs, the many crutches of paralytics give evidence, and the frequent enlightenings of the blind, and the cures of the fevered, which by the inhabitants of that place are reported to have been restored to their former state through the merits of the blessed Man.
[15] [Those wishing to translate his body, a storm suddenly arising, desist from what they had begun.] Fame therefore, which knows no rest, strong in its own mobility, beats upon the ears of the bishop then attending to his pontifical cares at the city of the Vangiones c, and lays open the whole matter in order. Much wonder over the departure of the blessed Father draws him in various directions; and beyond measure he congratulated himself that he had been made an end of by martyrdom on the very border of his diocese d. But the aforesaid report glides over the waves of the river Rhine, and blows over the roofs of all the houses of the city of the Nemetes; and going far on from thence, taken up on swift wings, it flew about the mouths of the citizens of the city of Strasbourg e. In truth the aforesaid bishop of the city of the Vangiones believed that he would obtain the treasure of the blessed body []; and relying upon the counsel of his nobles, with the fellowship of the bishops of the other cities he came to the place where the Saint of God had rested in peace, intending at once to translate the holy clod [] from thence. Indeed, as they were already busying themselves to dig up and carry off the Saint's relics, immediately a beast, marvellous to see and horrible, which they call a hyena f, rose up and appeared: and the sky begins to roar with a great rumbling, and with a sudden crash the fierce air swelled. There follows a monstrous storm mingled with hail: blind fires too flashed beneath the clouds. Presently the crowd of both sexes, terrified with exceeding fear, go beneath the roofs of the houses [*], knowing from the midst of so great a tumult that the Majesty of God did not yet, in their judgment, wish them to be cheated of so great a Patron. Thus, made powerless to fulfil their vow, they returned home with great confusion.
[16] St. Lambert seeks it again, and at length These things therefore being done, rumour, which knows not how to stand still and gains strength by going, came to the knowledge of blessed Lambert g, who, as is clear, was afterwards substituted in the bishopric; which gracious man, turning over the horrible crime with long sighs, drew groans from the depth; he bedewed his fair cheeks, blooming as yet with their first flower, with a warm river from his eyes: and who could refrain from tears who beheld that angelic face clouded with so great sorrow? Therefore as soon as he could, tearing himself away from his usual course, happy he happily sought the presence of the long-desired Master; and what he sought he found. But the people resisting, and not at all obtaining what he desired with his whole heart, and seeing the hope he had conceived taken from him, he at once returned. But no delay is given, nor rest. A second time also, having prepared much money, he betook himself with happier auspices to the same place. Presently the sudden return of the venerable Man made the tillers of that land exceedingly anxious; and like flocks of birds in thickened wedges the chief men sought his presence, whose breasts, feeding them with most wholesome commands, he thus addressed with a calm mouth h: Dearest brethren and most steadfast fellow-soldiers, it is always better to suffer than to do a wrong. The body of our father Theodard the bishop, now sought by a second coming, do not deny; who, as is established, departed from us in sound life, and was taken from human affairs on your border. Do not, I beseech you, deprive sons of their own father; since rather, by the divine precepts, you ought to bestow profitable solace upon the bereaved. Let it suffice you that he hallowed your lands with his blood. Now at last render up the lifeless body.
[17] At these words the sternness of all who stood by began to be bent to mercy; carries it off when he has obtained it, for indeed none had been able to remain unbending before the honey-flowing entreaty of the angelic man: and, opinion being compared, they resolve to hear him who most humbly besought them. Therefore the man devoted to God, that he might bind them more closely to himself and make them consenting to his purpose, opened the most richly furnished coffers which he had brought with him, and not only did he not delay to distribute gifts of silver to each of the men and women and little children according to the measure of each; and — to be silent about very many things — he never desisted until he had comforted each of the men, old man and youth, with single coins, and women with child with a twofold gift. At last, giving thanks to almighty God, who had granted him a happy issue, and bidding farewell to all, he happily carried away with him the body of the most blessed Martyr with hymns and praises.
[18] Then at last, having obtained the accomplishment of his purpose, in the village i and lays it down in the village of Liège. which the water of the river washes on one side, where the same afterwards succeeded as bishop, and consecrated the ashes of his own body by departing from this light, he chose with the highest reverence a burial for the holy bishop of God, Theodard. Let us therefore suppliantly entreat the loving-kindness of these holy Martyrs and bishops; for they have very great power with God, that by their merits and intercessions our Lord Jesus Christ may grant peace to all the worshippers of his faith, and that we may deserve to behold him eternally, such as the eyes of the Saints of the world can behold him, in the perfect Trinity, through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATA.
* of his body.
* body.
* of the houses.
ELOGIUM
By Anselm, canon of the church of St. Lambert at Liège
From Martène's edition, tome 4 of the Collectio amplissima, from column 845, collated with the copy printed in Chapeaville, tome 1, page 100.
Theodard, bishop of Maastricht, martyr among the Nemetes in Germany (St.)
BHL Number: 8047 a
A. By Anselm, canon of Liège.
The episcopate of Maastricht; the cause and place of his martyrdom; Blessed Theodard therefore, formed under blessed Remaclus to a nicety b in ecclesiastical discipline, when his master of his own accord declined the honour of the pontificate out of desire for a stricter life, succeeded him in the see of Tongeren, or of Maastricht, as the twenty-eighth c bishop. He, while he goes to address the royal ears on behalf of the goods of the church entrusted to him, and to demand help against the invaders of the church's estates, in a certain forest which is called Biwalt, not far from the city of the Nemetes, which by the usual name is now called Speyer, was suddenly hemmed in on every side by those very robbers of his own church, and, his companions fleeing away from him in every direction, he himself, innocent, was there butchered d.
[2] a woman punished with blindness, and her sight restored to her; And without delay the clemency of almighty God declared e of how great merit that man was in his sight. For a certain girl, when with a pious rashness she had taken away from her mistress threads of the weft, wherewith the Martyr's head, broken into fragments, might be bound together, returning with her flock [], gravely offended her mistress herself, because she did not render the day's task; so much so that, driven by fury, she rose against her with fists and blows. But suddenly, while she strikes, she is herself struck by God with a heavier blow, namely with blindness. Straightway the household resounds with mourning; the neighbours, summoned by the lamentation of the servants, are at hand. The cause of so sudden a blindness being diligently sought out, they ran swiftly [] to the body of the Priest; the guilty woman is led thither with the faith and prayers of those who flock together; in confession of her crime pardon is asked and obtained: and she learns to seek mercy from him at whose funeral she had a little before been unwilling that her maidservant should show devotion. Whence the concern of the inhabitants, being assured of the powers of the Priest by so evident a token, takes care f to commit his bones to the earth in that same place with the highest reverence.
[3] But as time went on g his successor, our venerable patron Lambert, very often h attempted to transfer the same bones of his Master from thence to us. [the translation of the body to Liège, and the Saint's cult in the place of his first burial.] And when, the band of country-folk loudly protesting and defending with arms the bones of their Martyr, as they said, this had long been in vain, the divine mercy at length granted the grace that they should give the priest i leave to translate so great a treasure from thence. Each of whom, with most abundant gifts of money,
he left loaded, and holy Lambert carried the pledge of the sacred body to his own church k. Whose day of passion the fellow-countrymen of that same province are wont still to keep every year with the highest solemnity; and although he is absent in his bones, they rejoice to have him present in the merits and signs which are frequently wrought in that same place.
ANNOTATA.
In Chapeaville, with her flocks*.
Ibid., they run*.
SECOND ACTS
by Sigebert, monk of Gembloux
From the edition of Surius and from manuscripts.
Theodard, bishop of Maastricht, martyr among the Nemetes in Germany (St.)
BHL Number: 8049
A. By Sigebert of Gembloux.
CHAPTER I.
His life before the episcopate of Maastricht; the virtues by which he makes his church illustrious.
[ ] His birth and monastic life under king Lothar II; Blessed Theodard, born in Gaul, was illustrious for the noble lineage of his parents, destined to be the ornament of the kingdom and the glory of the Church. At that time Lothar a, son of Chilperic, ruled the kingdom of the Franks, recalling by name and by valour his grandfather Lothar, the son of Clovis b, who caused the nation of the Franks, baptized with him by blessed Remigius c, to be enrolled in the service of the eternal King. Therefore under Lothar the second, Theodard, advanced from boyhood to the parting of the ways of adolescence d, despised the broad road, on which he saw many that were called straying off to the left; and chose the narrow way, by which the few elect make their way to the right. For, made over by the devotion of his parents to monastic discipline, he willingly bore the light yoke of Christ. And because, according to the Lord's word, a good tree could not bring forth evil fruits, he showed in the flower of his growing age how sweet and how abundant a fruit he would give in his season. For indeed the grace of God, which had gone before him that he might will what is good, also followed after, that he might be able to accomplish it. For as, when a good temper of the air smiles upon the season, the earth bears fruit more abundantly, so in the time of king Lothar e, the tranquillity of affairs smiling, the holy Church bore fruit more abundantly in the Saints of God, whom outwardly no storm of affairs, or a rare one, disquieted. For while wars raged through almost the whole world, the Lombards harassing Italy, which they had lately [f] invaded; and Asia and Africa being overrun now by Persians, now by Saracens, the lands of Gaul alone, which the Franks inhabited, rejoiced in a firm peace, and while the other nations fought for their safety, the Franks fought for glory.
[2] But this is to be ascribed not so much to human virtue as to the divine goodness, his intercourse with SS. Arnulf, Eligius and John the Lamb: which at that time had armed the chief men of the kingdom and of the Church with prudence and fortitude, with sanctity and wisdom, that through them the kingdom and the Church might prosper far and wide. Of how great account God held them, almost the whole world perceived, chiefly in this, that at that time Heraclius, emperor of the Romans, having conquered the Persians, brought back to Jerusalem the Cross of Christ, which the Persians, after burning Jerusalem, had carried off and held for fifteen years, and appointed the day of its Exaltation to be celebrated g. But that we may know who they were by whose example or teaching Theodard emulated the better gifts, let us gather many from a few, the distant from the near, the unknown from the known. Among them pre-eminent was Arnulf, from mayor of the palace bishop of Metz h, Eligius, from a goldsmith afterwards bishop of Noyon, and John also of Tongeren, from a layman chosen by God to be a bishop by the same sign as Aaron the first; for the rod of this man too, which he carried in his hand, being fixed in the ground at the bidding of an angel, grew green again, put forth leaves, blossomed and bore fruit. By imitating such men Theodard made progress in the twofold knowledge; clinging to their side, he was known and dear to the princes of the palace i.
[3] Already the report of his name had risen to the throne of Dagobert k, [the fame of his virtues becomes known to Dagobert I the monarch, under whom various monasteries were founded:] who reigned after his father Lothar: and after the report the truth of the matter admitted him also to the king's mind. And now God, who was mighty to make every grace abound in his servant Theodard, was preparing an occasion whereby among men of great name he might make this man too worthy of a great name. For under Dagobert, on account of the happier course of that time, the grace of the Holy Spirit kindled many more to give their labour to founding monasteries for the gaining of souls to God. First of these there meets us Landelin, who, changed from a robber into a herald of the faith, made the monastery of Lobbes the foundation of his devotion. Aldegund placed the bridal chamber of her virginity with Christ her spouse in the monastery of Maubeuge. Her sister Waldetrude sowed the sixtyfold fruit of continence in the monastery of Mons. Her husband, duke Vincent, having triumphed over the world, raised a standard to God at Hautmont. And what need is there to proclaim the nobility of Gertrude of Nivelles, the glory of whose name is spread more widely than all Gaul? When these tillers of the faith besought the Lord of the harvest to send many labourers into the great harvest, he directed thither pilgrim labourers from parts beyond the sea, Bertuin, Etto and others, Foillan with his brothers Ultan and Fursey; of whom Foillan founded the monastery of Fosses and hallowed it by his martyrdom l.
[4] But the eye of the divine dispensation foresaw that among so many and such men there should not be lacking to his beloved Theodard a place Stavelot and Malmedy founded by St. Sigebert III king of Austrasia, of which in which he too, having raised a triumphal arch, might depict his victories and fasten up the spoils taken from the enemy. Sigebert, reigning in Austrasia after his father Dagobert, honoured the royal power with an affection for divine religion, so as to prove that the miracle which God had shown concerning him was not idle. For when holy Amand was catechizing him, when he was scarcely forty days from his birth, at the end of the prayer, when none of the bystanders answered Amen, God opened his mouth, and in the hearing of all he answered with a clear voice, Amen m. He, adopting God as the heir of his goods, established twelve monasteries; but he pressed on more earnestly in founding the monastery of Stavelot, Grimoald the mayor of the palace working with him in building a monastery in the place which is called Malmedy. These, having taken counsel with Remaclus, bishop of the Tongerians, and Cunibert n, bishop of Cologne, to whose dioceses those places belonged, found no one more fit than Theodard, whom they might set over those places o, that he might lay a spiritual foundation upon the chief corner stone, Christ Jesus.
[5] [St. Theodard is made abbot; under the same Sigebert he is set over the church of Maastricht,] But Theodard, knowing that a burden and not an honour is laid upon one who does not know how to preside, preferred to be rather than to be called abbot, that being made all things to all men he might gain all. In the end he so bore himself that it might deservedly be said to him by the kingdom and by the church: Thy wisdom is greater and thy works greater than the report which we have heard of thee. Remaclus laboured indeed with a father's solicitude for the governance of the bishopric of Tongeren, but this went ill with him, that the yield of the fruits answered him ill. Whence, wearied of his labours, he turned back in mind to the harbour of the solitary life; from which, drawn out by king Dagobert [p], he had undertaken the ship of the church to be governed. He goes to king Sigebert [q], and alleging the causes of his own inability, asks that his dismissal be given him, and that a shepherd be substituted for the church by canonical authority. The matter is carried from the palace to the judgment of the Church. The Church assents to the palace. Remaclus, freed from the burden of the episcopal load, and rejoicing that he had swum out of the shipwreck of the world, sought the harbour of the monastery of Stavelot, and, giving himself to contemplation, dwelt with himself. Deliberation being taken in common about substituting a bishop, recourse is had to Theodard, and of all he alone pleases, as one who ought worthily to preside over all. For because, according to the Apostle, he had ministered well, he had purchased to himself a good degree [r]. Therefore by the equal consent of the Church and of the palace and with the unanimous applause of clergy and people Theodard, being elected and consecrated bishop by bishop Cunibert, presided over the church of Maastricht as the twenty-eighth from Maternus [s], the first bishop of the Tongerians.
[6] [in whose administration he showed himself a most perfect bishop in life and manners.] Who, since as from virtue to virtue
he went, so he had been promoted from honour to honour, set before himself in his mind as a mirror the Apostle Paul, who with a voice still living declares what a bishop ought to be. By this teaching, because he conformed himself to all, he drew the affections of all to himself: and although he went before all in glory, yet he was dear to all. He was mighty to exhort in sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers: because what he taught in word he showed by example. For by the precept and example of the Lord Jesus, because he was greater than all, he was the servant and minister of all: before all things clothed with the armour of God, his loins girt about with truth, clothed with the breastplate of justice, his feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; furnished with the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, he was strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power, that he might be able to stand against the snares of the devil, and to war down the spiritual wickednesses in high places. Whom his daily instance urged on, namely the solicitude of all the churches; he suffered nothing slack, gave no place to sloth, but night and day worked out his salvation. Considering also that God through the prophet Ezekiel threatens shepherds who feed themselves and not the flock of God, he fed the flock of God according to God, not for the sake of filthy lucre but willingly; not lording it over the clergy, but made from the heart a pattern to the flock: that when the Prince of shepherds should come he might receive the unfading crown of glory.
ANNOTATA.
b. Or Clovis I.
p. In his Chronicle, however, Sigebert writes that St. Remaclus was ordained bishop of Maastricht in the year 646, after the death of Dagobert I. In both places he errs; for that holy bishop did not begin to sit in the see translated from Tongeren to Maastricht before the year 650 or the following, as was shown in the preliminary Commentary, number 15.
q. Read again what was said in the same place, number 19.
r. In the Rooklooster manuscript these words are added: and being faithful over a few things, he was worthy to be set over many.
s. Of him we shall treat at the 14th of September.
CHAPTER II.
He instructs St. Lambert; he goes to the king to recover the goods of the church; he is put to martyrdom by their unjust possessors.
[ ] He forms the adolescence of St. Lambert with the best instruction; he urges Lambert, of good natural disposition, was at this time growing up to good hope, whom his father, the most illustrious man Aper, had committed to the man of God Landoald a, archpriest of bishop Amand, that he might imbue his boyish years with regular discipline and liberal learning. His father, rejoicing that his son had been initiated by Landoald in the rudiments of both kinds of knowledge according to his wish, committed him also to the mastership of Theodard, that the more he should draw from the knowledge of many, the more abundantly he might advance in grace. As silver is made better when it is gilded by the goldsmith, so Lambert, shining with the silver of his natural genius, while he is bettered by the added mastership of Theodard, is more amply adorned as it were by an overlaid material of gold. Theodard, having himself experienced that to those who love God all things work together for good, rejoiced that all things fell out prosperously for him, and a good yield of fruits lightened his labour. When therefore by God's grace and his own diligence he was restoring many things, this care gnawed at him more sharply, that he knew the possessions of his church had been carried off by domestic enemies and unjust plunderers, and that for a long time already, alienated from the right of the church, they had passed into the right of the unjust.
[8] the restitution of the possessions alienated from his church He grieved that this had happened from a defect of the times and from the negligence of his predecessors: from a defect of the times, because the security contracted from a long leisure of peace had turned many away from regard for the fear of God, and from an abundance of goods a negligence of good manners had crept in, and, external wars ceasing, they were imperilled by the internal wars of their own minds. Hence, injustice everywhere prevailing against the church of God, which always makes its first assaults against the innocence of the good, no man's justice came to the aid of the church of God, no power of princes was its patron. This grief, and no small one, lay upon bishop Theodard, that the church of Maastricht had been mutilated of a great quantity of its possessions, and that for about thirty years no one had fought back, or at least protested, for the right of the church of God. For Amand, whose sanctity ought not to be praised in few words, because he had baptized king Sigebert and received him from the font, was compelled by the prayers of king Dagobert, when bishop John had died, to undertake the bishopric of Maastricht. But when the storms of tempests rushed in upon the ship of the church from every side, considering what the Apostle says, that no man being a soldier to God entangles himself with secular business, after three years he left the bishopric and betook himself to the harbour of the desired quiet. Whose place his archpriest Landoald opportunely discharged for nine years, but he could not stand for the church, because he had nothing of pontifical right. All these things were the more opportune for the plunderers. Concerning Remaclus, because he had not been able to stretch out his arms against the torrent of overflowing evils, Theodard believed his own eyes and ears [b]. He himself, having undertaken the helm of the Lord's ship, feared the reproach of inconstancy if, driven by dangers, he should give ground.
[9] Lest therefore the long impunity of injustice should grow further inveterate, upon their unjust possessors; he girded himself manfully, and standing before the camp of the church he ceased not to cry out: as with a trumpet lifting up his voice he declared to the people their wickednesses, and to the plunderers their sins. Like an eagle standing over the house of God, with the sharpness of his eyes he foresaw the cunning of the unjust, and defended himself with his talons. And because there was in him integrity of life, and speech sound and blameless, he who was on the opposite side reverenced him, having no evil to say of him. The favour of king Sigebert c protected him against all, who, a lover of divine religion, had the eyes of a dove's simplicity. When he had died, the kingdom of Austrasia, which he had held, his brother Clovis gave to his own son [d] Childeric. Then indeed all malice and injustice prevailed in the kingdom, and against the church the heavy whirlwind of a domestic tempest thundered. But Theodard, because he was not a hireling, did not flee from the face of the wolves; but stood the more steadfastly against them for his sheep. And because the essentially good Shepherd had said: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; neither in this was he a deaf hearer, being ready to lay down his life for his sheep.
[10] But that he might leave nothing untried, he resolves to go to king Childeric and to make formal complaint before him concerning the injustices inflicted on the church, [to plead his cause against whom he goes to the king, and being slain by them on the journey,] if perchance by the royal censure the church might recover its possessions: and being taught from God by the oracle of his own mind that the time of his passion was at hand, he set his house in order, and bidding a last farewell to all, and commending his sheep to him who had commended them to him, with steadfastness of mind for his guide, he set out on the journey with a few. Moreover the sons of Belial, who through the hardness of an impenitent heart were treasuring up wrath to themselves, could by no means be brought to any way of repentance. Who knowing that justice would in nothing answer for them, if a controversy over the goods of the church which they had seized were argued before the courtiers, heap evils upon evils, and out of the peril of despair plot the death of the innocent Bishop, and diligently spy out his journey. The holy Man, tenacious of his just purpose, whom the living and effectual word of God armed, saying: Fear not them that kill the body only, had already passed far beyond the bounds of his diocese, and had fixed his step, still amid good revenues, in the district which they commonly call Alsace e; and behold, a wedge of the enemies
of God, emerging from their ambush, with lances raised, rushed upon the slaying of the innocent man. He, protected by the safe shield of patience, wished to invite them to the good of peace: but because they were not sons of peace, peace, finding in them nothing whereon to rest, returned to the friend of peace. Like wolves the impious stand round the loving lamb, and as he lifts his eyes to heaven and prays for them after the example of Jesus hanging on the Cross, they load him with insults, cast him to the ground, and, because their power cannot exhaust their anger, cut into fragments the head anointed with holy oil, and tear the holy body limb from limb.
[11] he obtains the palm of martyrdom. The earth indeed was thus given into the hands of the impious; but the spirit, boiled clean of all the dross of earth by the fire of passion, and tried as gold in the furnace, returned to the Lord who made it. Faith, namely, which opened the heavens to Stephen the protomartyr, that he might see Jesus standing at the right hand of God to help him, this too opened the heavens to Theodard the martyr, and caused him, bearing the marks of Jesus, to be enrolled in the book of life with the Martyrs. God, who noted the unbelief of the Jews when he said: Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not, notes our unbelief also, who do not estimate the merits of those who please God by the strength of their works, but by the showing of signs: for signs do not make a man blessed, but show that he was of a blessed life, and by the novelty of the things lead us to the veneration of the Saints. Behold Theodard, who had been an instrument of the Holy Spirit, slain by the impious, lay as one worthless and despised, and as it were struck by God and humbled. But the divine goodness took away from men every scandal concerning him, when it showed evident signs in witness of his sanctity.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER III.
A woman punished with blindness and her sight restored to her; funeral rites celebrated by a thronging people; miracles in the place of his first burial; the body carried thence and laid down at Liège.
[ ] [The maidservant who had given the threads to join together the mangled body of St. Theodard, which] A boy of the holy Bishop's household, who alone, the rest being turned to flight, kept watch over the lifeless body, grieving that the limbs of the blessed body were scattered from him, strove to unite them in whatever way he might: and fitting limb indeed to limb or part to part, he had nothing wherewith to bind them together. For the enemies of justice, having perpetrated their crime, had plundered even all the baggage. What alone the boy could do, he did, and as many limbs as he could unite he bound together with his own bands. When his own bands were not yet sufficient for him, he began to fail in mind, and turning over many things with himself, by the counsel of his own mind he made for the farmstead which was nearest, hoping that God's help would not be lacking to him: nor did his hope deceive him; for as he went he came upon a poor woman occupied in the care of pasturing sheep and drawing out threads from her distaff in spinning. He addresses the woman, and as a suppliant asks that threads be given him, and tells the cause why he asks; and lays open the whole matter in order. She, hearing the bitterness of the execrable crime, at first shuddered and was struck dumb. Then, being brought almost to tears by a feeling of humanity, she said: What you ask, O boy, I would gladly give; but there is a certain cause why I refuse. For to the mistress of the house, whose servant I am, I owe a daily task; and if it be diminished, I shall not bear it unpunished, nor escape loss. She spoke, and setting the compassion of her mind before fear, she willingly gave the threads to him who asked.
[13] [is found illumined with a heavenly light, is struck by her mistress; but she is presently punished with blindness:] The boy, having gained his wish, was hastening back as quickly as he might; and lest his labour should weary him, he received from God a consolation greater than his wish. For he found two lights shining on either side at the head and feet of the Martyr. Who would not marvel at thy mighty works, O Christ? Because Theodard had been light in the Lord, and had walked as a son of light, thou, the true Light, enlightening every man, didst by angelic ministry procure the service of light for the obsequies of him whom thou hadst called from the darkness of the world to the true and eternal light. This miracle the divine power confirms by a greater miracle, that the name and merit of the Martyr might become known more quickly and more widely. The woman who diminished her task for the service of him, in the evening, when the sheep had been called back to the folds, rendered the daily task to her mistress. And because the mistress perceived that it was diminished, accusing the maidservant of fraud, she struck her head with a heavy blow. But God's goodness excuses the maidservant of the fraud: for the mistress, struck with a sudden blindness of her eyes, cries out with wailing to her servant, and the servant too cries out, pitying her mistress. The matter is published through the household: the report of it makes the whole farmstead astonished. The maidservant sets forth before all the cause of the blindness inflicted, and, that the fault may be made pardonable, urges her to reconcile the Bishop to herself, so that, pardon being obtained from God, he may restore the light which the offence had taken away from her.
[14] Her distress compels the mistress, trusting the words of the maidservant, to take counsel for her own misery. With the maidservant for guide, the mistress came to the place where the venerable body lay: confessing her fault and seeking pardon, she recovers her sight from the Saint, which, thus scattered, was pitiable for all to see. The mistress confesses her fault concerning the maidservant unjustly struck, and, that she may deserve to obtain pardon, appeases with vows and gifts the favour of the holy Martyr. When was it ever hard for God to hear the prayers of the wretched crying faithfully to him? The woman, having obtained pardon, rejoices in her restored sight, and seeing the limbs of the holy body bound together with her own threads, recognizes at last how greatly she had sinned, in that she had struck a maidservant innocent and devoted to the holy Martyr. All weep for gladness, all crying praise to God, thanks to God: the reverence due to the Martyr grows, fame flies through the whole neighbourhood, and runs further through the whole province also. Whithersoever you turned your eyes, you would see crowds running together. The mistress of the house, who was the cause and the witness of so great a miracle, cast herself wholly upon the favour of the holy Martyr, inviting all by her word and example to the service of celebrating the funeral. The change of circumstances taught them to grieve for a stranger; but the natural affection implanted in man drew forth tears also. For who could see without tears that a Man once of such nobility before the world, of such dignity in the Church, of such sanctity before God, stood in need even of burial?
[15] It is therefore urged by all that the due rites of burial be fittingly fulfilled. [who is honourably buried by the inhabitants, and honoured by God with various miracles.] These dry his wounds with soft cloths: those keep the garments stained with the holy blood for their own protection; they lay the limbs, sufficiently wept over, in a bier, and place precious coverings above them. The mistress of the house appoints the place of burial, and according to her appointment causes a tomb to be prepared in the place which is called Nec a. When the coffin of the body has been lifted, now these, now those rejoice to take their turn under the burden of bearing the body. Others going before point out the level roads to the bearers. With so great a
throng of every rank and age and of both sexes, with such reverence of humanity and devotion are the obsequies of the holy Martyr celebrated, and the body honourably entombed. Already this cause had checked the tears of all, that they believed they had reason to rejoice that they were held of such account before God, that unhoped-for he had sent them a Patron of such merit, who should be to them a protection or a remedy against all adversities. From every side gather bands of the sick, hoping through the merits of the new Martyr to obtain from God medicines for their diseases. How many works of mercy there, how many benefits of healing, how frequent the enlightenings of the blind, how many cures of the fevered came about there through the patronage of Theodard, the many crutches of paralytics attest, and the very many memorials of things which hang there, fastened up by the inhabitants, that by these the memory of posterity may recount how great a grace of God shone forth there through the name of Theodard.
[16] Fame, wandering far and wide, makes its way into the city of the Vangiones, the bishop of the Vangiones, about to translate the sacred body, which is now called Worms; and after it had filled the ears and tongues of the common people with much whispering, it made a way for itself also to the bishop of the city himself. The bishop, having heard of the departure of the blessed Father, after long sighs drawn from the depth of his breast was moved in contrary ways: for he was both saddened and gladdened. He was saddened because of the monstrous crime perpetrated within his diocese: but he was gladdened because of the patronage of a new Martyr conferred from heaven upon his diocese. Going further on, fame reached the city of Speyer, which antiquity called the city of the Nemetes: nor did it withdraw its foot from the city Argentina, which the German tongue names Strassburg. It glides through the whole region which the Rhine washes, swifter than the wind; nor does the wave of the Rhine flow down more quickly or further than the report of this matter ran; nor, content to range within the space of the nearer bank, it reached the bounds of Germany on either side. The bishop of the Vangiones, in suspense over this matter above all men, invites to himself the bishops of the neighbouring cities, calls together the chief men and nobles of the whole province; what he ought to do concerning this word which the Lord had done and shown them, he commits to their counsel: whether it be lawful for him to remove the body of the holy Bishop from a less worthy place and to carry it to a greater church. It is easy to carry counsel thither where the will of all breathes together into one. From the common counsel the devotion of all conceives one assent, that for the greater glory of the Martyr his body should be translated from thence.
[17] is hindered by God: On the day appointed for this all run together, and the number of the flowing people was not more certain than the number of the stars of heaven. Already they were girding themselves for the work, already the tomb of the holy Martyr was to be opened. But there is no reason, there is no counsel against the Lord, because the nature of things, fighting for the Lord of things, withstands him who withstands it. The sky suddenly bristled, and by its bristling made the earth tremble; the running murmurs of the winds foretell the storm; the present flashing of lightnings dazzles the eyes; thunders heavier than usual terrify the ears and minds of all; there rushed down so stormy a flood of rain-clouds that, had it been long-lasting, it could have sufficed to make a deluge. With so many things threatening present death, all fled: they desist from what they had begun of their own heart; concerning which, because they had not consulted the mouth of the Lord, they understood that they had judged against God. Who was ever a counsellor of God? That by this miracle also the glory of Theodard might shine far and wide, he had drawn together into one so many thousands of peoples from far and wide, that while all proclaimed the merits of one, God might be blessed by all through his name.
[18] St. Lambert The people of Maastricht, being assured of the slaying of their Bishop, showed by the greatness of their grief with what love they burned toward him. For his loving fatherliness sat deeper in the heart of all; there came back to them the great diligence of the Father for the profit of the church, for which he had resisted his enemies even to blood. Each had his own cause for which he had particularly to mourn over the Bishop's death. But Lambert, who while Theodard lived was the second hope of the church of Maastricht, had by the growth of his good disposition come to this, that, his Bishop being dead, the whole church leaned and rested upon him. He wept for the death of his Master more than all, because more than all his Master had loved him. But after the wound of grief inflicted on his heart, taking up the shield of constancy, he was wholly borne to this, that he might at least recover the body of his Master. Having measured out the long road with the swift flight of his will, he came to the place where the body of his departed Father lay in exile. Where, after he had loosed the tears which a son owed to a Father, he lays open to the inhabitants of the land the cause of his coming, and asks that none of them gainsay his desire of carrying back the body of his Father. With one mouth of all it is gainsaid to Lambert: for all cried out together that Theodard was theirs by right, whom God had of his own accord sent them for a patron, to whom he had shown so many miracles through him, and by a great miracle of things had forbidden that the holy body should be carried elsewhere by the bishops of the province.
[19] Thus Lambert, having failed of his wish, returns to Maastricht, that he may treat of the matter with clergy and people. carries it But the clergy and people lay the whole weight of the matter upon Lambert. Lambert, undertaking to conquer by another way, prepares much money and provision for the road, gathers much gold and silver and other kinds of goods, and casting his hope upon the Lord, seeks again the place he desired. And so the inhabitants, in suspense at his so swift return, receive him with a favourable affection, and marking from his countenance and bearing what reverence was owed him, attend upon him dutifully. But Lambert wins them over to himself by an affection of kindness, and repeating to them the cause of his journey, adds prayers that they deny him the body of his Father no further, saying that it was absurd that a Father should be denied to sons and a bishop to his citizens; that it was enough for them that he had consecrated their land with his blood; that the patronage of the holy Father would not fail them, whom they had held of such account as to entomb him honourably. Already their sternness was being bent, because the angelic man had softened them with his honey-flowing mouth. And that he might draw them further to his mind, opening the bosom of his liberality, he honours each of them with fitting gifts: nor does he withdraw his hand from the weaker folk: and to old men and boys he holds out single coins, and to women with child a double one. Having conquered them by such affection and diligence, when he had made them his own, he used their hearts at his pleasure.
[20] Therefore, they no longer resisting but doing service in all things, to Liège. he took the beloved body of his Father, and carried it back with hymns and praises, and entombed it in the public village of Liège with such honour as befitted a martyr. Who does not see here the dispensation of God? God's providence was working in Lambert when he foreordained that Liège should be adorned with the tomb of Theodard: for since the place of his passion had been marked out for Lambert there, and Liège itself was through Lambert to be enlarged into a city and exalted with the honour of an episcopal see, God would not have those separated far from one another in the tomb whom alone out of the number of the bishops of Tongeren he foresaw to be his equals through the glory of martyrdom, and to be equals also through the grace of merits. Theodard only forestalled Lambert, that he should not be the first martyr in this church; Lambert forestalled Theodard, that he should not be the only martyr in this church. O happy Liège! By whose equal martyrdom you are adorned, by their equal patronage before God you are helped. Let us magnify God through the glory of his Saints, that by the merits of the Saints we may obtain the grace of him who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.