ON ST. ADELPHIUS, ABBOT OF REMIREMONT, AT LUXEUIL IN THE COUNTY OF BURGUNDY,
AFTER THE YEAR DCLXV.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Adelphius, abbot of Remiremont, at Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy (S.)
BY J. P.
§ I. An account of the places; the Saint's Acts and illustrious lineage.
[ ] Each of the monasteries designated in the title is most celebrated throughout the Christian world, both for the noble virtues of its founders An account of the Luxeuil and Remiremont and their excellent deeds for fostering and promoting the splendor of the Catholic faith and of the cenobitic life, and for its antiquity and the abundance of Saints which it produced; both were built by the Vosges mountain, where the Burgundians are divided from the Lorrainers; that of Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy at the roots of the said mountain, that of Remiremont in the duchy of Lorraine. Of the former, which is commonly called Luxeuil, we have given an account in our Work in various places, namely in vol. III of March, p. 784, and in vol. 1 of May, p. 274, in the Preliminary Commentaries to the Acts of SS. Eustasius and Waldebert, its second and third abbots; to which, if anything ought to be added for fuller elucidation, that will belong more closely to the XXI day of November, when it will fall to discourse of S. Columbanus its founder and first abbot, than to this day; seeing that S. Adelphius seems to have dwelt no long time in that convent, and to have made it illustrious by his death in a way somewhat accidental, as is clear from his Life written by a contemporary author, and presently to be mentioned more fully.
[2] On occasion of S. Arnulph, first bishop of Metz, an account of the ascetery. then, his mitre laid aside, embracing the solitary life and dying among the monks of Remiremont, we set forth also the site of this abbey in vol. IV of July, p. 431, from Thierry Ruinart, who visited it in the year 1696, and set it forth as it then stood in his notes on chap. 58 of Fredegar the Scholastic. Nevertheless the matters which must be examined in the course of this commentary require here a somewhat fuller account of it. It owes its beginnings, as also its name, to S. Romaricus, often to be mentioned below, who, after he had for some time applied himself to the monastic life at Luxeuil under the governance of S. Eustasius the abbot, with S. Eustasius's assent, and accompanied by S. Amatus his spiritual master, forsook Luxeuil, and betook himself to a certain castle of his own domain, by name Habendum or Habundum, situated on a lofty ridge of the Vosges mountain, and there, not far from the river Moselle, founded a double monastery about the year 620; the one of men, over which S. Amatus presided as first abbot, the other of maidens, over which Mactefledis or Magdefledis, a virgin of excellent piety, was set as abbess. This holy congregation of persons of either sex, dwelling in separate houses, was called by one name the monastery of Habendum, and the place itself, from the sanctity of its dwellers, the Holy Mount, and afterward, as I have already noted, from its founder, Romarici Mons — Remiremont to the French, Rumersberg to the Germans. Under this last name there shines even today a college of noble canoness virgins, not indeed on the same mountain on which the monastery was built by S. Romaricus, but in the valley below beyond the Moselle: of this most illustrious convent more will recur below, when we shall have to speak of the various translations of S. Adelphius.
[3] The shorter Life The Life of S. Adelphius, copied from a most ancient manuscript codex which once belonged to the convent of S. Symphorian of Metz, Philippe Labbe inserted in vol. 1, p. 683 of his Bibliotheca, and the same, collated with the manuscript codices of André du Chesne, Mabillon afterward transferred into the 2nd Century of the Saints of the Order of S. Benedict, p. 602. We keep in our Museum, among very many manuscript documents sent to our Elders by Fr. Pierre-François Chifflet, or, after his death, by others from his papers, a transcript of the same Life, drawn, as its title shows, from a manuscript of S. Maximin of Trier: it plainly agrees with those already published, if only you except some little words, in no way changing the sense, and the end, in which it is mutilated; probably because, on account of the antiquity and obscurity of the script, it could not be read through by the copyist. When I shall have come to its last period, which is left imperfect, I shall warn the reader in the Annotations on the Life, which is to be appended to this Commentary from the edition of the praised Labbe and Mabillon.
[4] Whether the same author, as the moderns everywhere think, committed to writing the Acts of SS. Amatus, by a contemporary, Romaricus and Adelphius, the three first abbots of the convent of Habendum, whose contemporary he was, can be discussed at the XIII day of this month, sacred to S. Amatus among the men of Remiremont and others: for as regards the Acts of S. Romaricus, that is very likely; nay, that the said author was contemporary with S. Adelphius we clearly learn from num. 3, 7, and the last, where he hints that he wrote at the command of the abbess Tecta, whom he records at num. 6 to have been present at the funeral of our Saint. Here are the words with which he concludes the Life: These few things indeed have been narrated out of many, which the holy and kindly abbess Tecta, for the memory of the blessed man Adelphius, or for the example of the faithful, to be recalled in the course of time, ordered to be set in a little commentary and furrowed by the pen. Few indeed; would that more, for the memory of posterity! For he teaches us nothing at all about the holy Abbot's native land, stock, parents, the ordering of his earliest age, his coming to the solitude, or the like, which would show forth the idea of a Life duly written; he sets forth some things about his virtues in general, and the rest about the last deeds of the dying man and his funeral.
[5] To this the writer of the second Life, likewise anonymous, doubtless had regard; a longer one drawn up by an author of the XI century. since in the Prologue to the abbess Oda he brought forward the reason why only after being often asked, and at last impelled by her authority, he set himself to the composing of the Acts of S. Adelphius: I preferred, he says, to be silent, rather than to utter few things out of many, and those inelegantly: fearing this most of all, lest I should fall into the same reproach with him who, having undertaken this work, nevertheless, by the common judgment of all, carried it out with too little eloquence and fitness. Thus he; who therefore supplied whatever seemed to him to be lacking in the older Life; but from this he borrowed nearly all the rest, at least as to substance. Further, the second Life, according to which were composed the Lessons of the Office wont to be recited on the festival of S. Adelphius and on his octave day, was written about the middle of the XI century. This I gather from the Prologue just praised, directed to Oda; for a woman of that name is written to have presided over the convent of Remiremont as abbess about the year 1051, in Calmet before vol. 3 of the History of Lorraine, col. CLXXXVII, in the list of the abbesses of the said convent; and to the confirmation of this there comes an ancient document, to which the abbess Oda is read as subscribed together with Bibo, bishop of Toul about the year 1070, as may be seen in the praised Calmet after vol. 1 among the proofs, col. 412. Finally it is most manifestly proved from the account which we shall recite at num. 38 of the Appendix on the posthumous Glory of the Saint, to be appended to the Lives: where it is said that Oda obtained from Pope Leo IX that an examination should be instituted of the virtues and miracles of SS. Amatus, Romaricus, Adelphius and Gebetrudis, and that to that end the same Pontiff delegated to Romarici Mons Hugh, archbishop of Besançon, and Udo, primicerius of the church of Toul, who after the examination decreed that their Histories and miracles, as of true Saints of God, should both be written down and inserted into the divine Offices, by the authority of the Roman Pontiff by whom they had been sent.
[6] drawn up. The Chifflet of ours praised at num. 3 communicated also to our Elders a transcript of the second Life, with accounts of the translations and of some miracles, from a manuscript codex of Romarici Mons, with an attestation of an apostolic notary subjoined in this manner: For a copy drawn from an old book by me the undersigned notary. La Roche, apostolic notary. Here the biographer's prologue to Oda was lacking, yet it was afterward sent from the manuscripts of Sébastien Valdenaire, of whom mention will recur in the appendix at num. 7. And these things about the writer, age, and place of the said Life, whence it came down to us, are sufficiently established. Not so solidly proved to be true are the several things which are maintained in it about the stock and parents of S. Adelphius, seeing that the biographer is about four centuries later than he, nor do we dig out like things from the older Acts of SS. Adelphius and Romaricus. Therefore, before we proceed further, it will be worth the labor to have set forth its chief points contracted into a compendium, and to have examined what can hinder or help their truth or likelihood, that we may afterward more safely determine concerning the rest.
[7] In this Life S. Adelphius is asserted to have been the grandson of S. Romaricus. According to this biographer, when S. Romaricus was about to send word of farewell to the vanities of the world, there survived to him three daughters, whom he purposed likewise to withdraw from the world, and to make over all his goods to the divine service. The plan pleased two of them, who afterward followed their parent to the desert of Habendum; the third, by name Asselberga, without share of the inheritance and without her father's counsel, married a certain man in the parts of Sicambria, whose name was Bethilinus, a man of the highest nobility and much power. From that marriage a twofold offspring was begotten, first a female, then a male; both — but the latter not yet baptized — Asselberga sent to Romaricus, who was already then dwelling in the desert, to be brought up as their grandfather's heir, as she hoped. He gladly embraced his grandchildren; the girl, whose name was Tecta and afterward also Gebetrudis, he committed to the holy virgins in the monastery of Habendum to be brought up; the boy, to be washed in the waters of salvation, he willed to be received from the sacred font by S. Amatus, and to be named Adelphius; and afterward commended him to the care and discipline of S. Arnulph, bishop of Metz. Thus the biographer.
[8] of which there is no mention, Against these things stands, as I just hinted, the writer's age more remote from our Saint, and the deep silence of the nearly contemporary author in the Acts especially of S. Romaricus: where of his marriage, daughters, grandchildren there is not a word; so that Mabillon, in a letter to a friend on the original ordinance of the convent of Remiremont, written in French, and published among his and Ruinart's posthumous Works by Vincent Thuillier, a Benedictine of the congregation of S. Maur, speaks of S. Romaricus in this manner: He does not seem ever to have been bound by marriage; at least, when he disposed of his goods before he withdrew to Luxeuil, he laid out all upon the poor, reserving to himself only a single estate, as I have said, which he was to use when an occasion should offer greatly conducing to the glory of God and the profit of his neighbor. Nothing is said of his offspring, although express mention is made of the servants whom he had as companions in his new ordering of life. Thus far he, according to the older Life of S. Romaricus, published by him in the 2nd Benedictine Century, p. 416. And indeed that silence appears to me so wonderful that I do not think anyone will easily assign a cause for it who has believed that daughters were in fact begotten by Romaricus.
[9] For here those reasons do not avail by which we easily perceive the cause of such silence in the earlier writer on the deeds of S. Adelphius, in the older Life of S. Romaricus; since he expressly signifies in the Prologue that he will write only the good and praiseworthy works which … toward the last day of his death … Adelphius the abbot performed. For the biographer of S. Romaricus hints nothing of this kind; but on the contrary, of that Saint's deeds,
at least for the greater part, he gives a series begun some years before he bade farewell to the world and the court. Nor can it be said that the offspring of S. Romaricus lay hidden from him, since he dedicated his lucubration to the abbess Cæcilia, whom all who cling to the later Acts of S. Adelphius, and to other documents which agree with them, say to have been his daughter. But to think that, taking no thought for posterity, he recorded nothing of his Saint's daughters and grandchildren because these things lay hidden from none of the dwellers on the holy Mount, or because the abbess Cæcilia had for her modesty's sake enjoined this upon him, is a little better, in my judgment, than divining.
[10] It remains to be seen whether such silence — from which certainly there is formed a negative argument very often exceedingly solid — but in it several omissions worthy of note is here of such strength as utterly to shatter whatever can be produced for the lineage of our Saint asserted by the second biographer. First of all, that contemporary biographer of S. Romaricus wraps in silence not a few things which beyond doubt he did not fail to know, and why he did so we cannot declare. For what reason was there why he neither designated the said Saint's native land, nor expressed the name of his parents, nor touched with a word his earliest age, content to have said only this: Blessed Romaricus, noble in the palace and illustrious in his kindred, shone forth everywhere lovable? Whereas the same man, according to the opinion of Mabillon and others the author of the Life of S. Amatus, describes these things accurately: Born, he says, of noble parents, sprung of Roman stock, in a suburb of the city of Grenoble, a boy of excellent disposition arose (Amatus), his father namely being Heliodorus, resting upon the highest Christianity. See what follows in Mabillon, 2nd Benedictine Century, p. 130. Secondly, why does he say nothing of the familiar intercourse and bond of friendship of SS. Romaricus and Arnulph, when they were living at court, and of the plan taken by them to forsake the world and to seek the monastery of Lérins, which an anonymous monk, companion of S. Romaricus, in the Life of S. Arnulph among us in vol. IV of July, p. 435, and Umno in the second Life there, p. 441, report as things worthy of record?
[11] There is also another thing passed over by the same biographer; namely the dissension of SS. Amatus and Romaricus with S. Eustasius, abbot of Luxeuil; other omissions are detected, the lapse of both, deceived by the frauds of Agrestius or Agrestinus; their repentance and return to favor with the aforesaid abbot, as Jonas of Bobbio, likewise a contemporary author, narrates at length in the Acts of S. Eustasius, in our Work, vol. III of March, at the XXIX day, p. 789. But the cause of this omission is easily detected: he feared doubtless lest he should brand the memory of the Saints with a stain among posterity; but he did not consider that by such an account nothing is taken away, among good men, from the veneration of Saints, when their true repentance is established, as here it was established, since God sometimes permits such things either for the instruction of others or for other ends, as is clear from innumerable examples. Nay, he did not observe that by the studied omission of such things a writer's authority is not a little diminished. Receive now the documents which fight for the lineage of S. Adelphius asserted in his second Life.
[12] and the illustrious lineage asserted of our Saint There offers itself before the rest the second Life of S. Romaricus, gathered from manuscript books and published with notes in the year 1605 by the Mainz press by our Nicolas Serarius, who does not signify whence he obtained them, or in what century he supposes them to have been written. I should think they were written on the same occasion as the second Life of our Saint, and accordingly not before the XI century, as I showed at num. 5. In Serarius the omissions already noted in the older Life of S. Romaricus are supplied, and of his marriage and offspring the following are read in chap. 4: Romaricus married a wife not unequal in lineage and wealth, but whose name is unknown, and by her had three daughters, Aselberga, Adsalsudis, and Segeberga … But the first, Aselberga, contrary to her parent's pious will, preferred marriage to the holy purpose of chastity. In chap. 8 this likewise is read: Among whom (the virgins who followed Romaricus) there excelled that holy man's own granddaughter Gebetrudis, as also in the company of the men her brother Adolphus. For when the first … of the Saint's daughters had chosen marriage, she married a certain most noble and most splendid man of the nation of the Sicambri, whose name was Bithylinus. From that marriage two children were born, whom, her husband consenting, the daughter sent to her father, that they might be holily brought up by him, and, if it seemed good, consecrated to God in that place which she herself had once rejected. These things do not differ from what was recited at num. 7 from our second biographer, except that here the names of the daughters, omitted there, are expressed; that for Adelphius is written Adolphus; and that another motive for sending her offspring is attributed to Asselberga. The first two do not change the matter, nor does the third either: for we can suspect that both authors used indeed the same document, but that, since it was simply said in it that Adelphius and Gebetrudis had been sent that they might gain what their mother had lost, this was understood by the one of the loss of temporal, by the other of spiritual goods.
[13] is confirmed from many other monuments There follows now the codex which we have written by the hand of our praised Chifflet, to which likewise the place whence it was copied is not appended; nevertheless the list of Saints and the order of festivals prefixed to it sufficiently declare the place. For, if you except one or two Saints inserted in it, all belong most closely to the men of Remiremont. In the month of September the festivals of SS. Adelphius and Amatus, in the month of December that of S. Romaricus, are prescribed to be celebrated with an Octave; and at other seasons of the year feasts are appointed of SS. Cæcilia and Gebetrudis, and of four translations, of which below; and in the codex itself hymns and lessons proper to each day are written out; so that I cannot doubt that all, at least what is contained in the lessons, is drawn from the documents of Remiremont. There is besides that the Proper of the Saints of the notable church of S. Peter of Romarici Mons — a copy of which, published in the year 1657 by the press of Dijon, is in my possession — contains, besides many other things, exactly the same as we have already enumerated from the praised manuscript codex, and bears this approbation: These Offices, excerpted from ancient codices worthy of credit, Sébastien, bishop, duke of Langres, and Peer of France, at the request of the illustrious Canonesses of S. Peter of Romarici Mons, a due examination having gone before, has praised and approved, by a signed document given at Langres, XXX December MDCXLVI. Subscribed. By the mandate of the most illustrious and most reverend lord bishop duke. Gourdon. Further, from the said lessons I cull a few things pertaining to the present purpose. On the IX day of December, and on the second day within the Octave of S. Romaricus, in the Office this is the beginning of the IV lesson: Blessed Romaricus, renouncing the world, had retained only one estate, as it were for the dowry of his two daughters. On the XII day of August, the feast of S. Cæcilia the abbess, the first of the three proper lessons, which we gave entire at the said day in vol. 2 of August, p. 732, thus begins: Cæcilia, who is also Clara and Segoberga, doubly the daughter of blessed Romaricus, in that he begot her both to the world and to Christ, renouncing the world together with her sister Adzaltrudis, was to her most pious father the occasion of founding a monastery of maidens. On the VII of November likewise the fourth lesson of the Office of S. Gebetrudis has this opening: Gebetrudis was the sister of holy Adelphius, and the granddaughter of blessed Romaricus by his daughter Asselberga.
[14] I add nothing from the lessons of the Office of our Saint, from many other monuments because I noted at num. 5 that they were composed according to his longer Life: but in their place I substitute what Mabillon himself writes in vol. 1 of the Annals at the year 653: In an ancient Breviary of Romarici Mons, written by hand, on the feast of S. Adelphius the abbot, Romaricus is said to have had three daughters, of whom two remained virgins; but the third, by name Asserberga, not acquiescing in her father's devotion, is handed down to have married, etc. To these I subjoin what we read among the auctaria to the Martyrology of Usuard in our Sollerius from the codex of the Holy Mount at the XI day of September: There shines the birthday of Adelphius, nobly sprung of the illustrious nation of the Sicambri, whose mother was the daughter of the most noble Romaricus, our holy rector and most sweet patron. Likewise at the VII day of November: The venerable passing of the most noble virgin Gebetrudis, a most holy abbess, sister of blessed Adelphius. The same opinion have been followed by Ménard, bk. 1 of the Observations at the VIII day of December, and bk. 2 at the XI of September; Ruyr, On the Sacred Antiquities of the Vosges, bk. IV, chap. 12; Bucelin in the Menology at both days just named; and others. But the rest of the writers, who in treating of S. Romaricus have not mentioned our Saint, either acknowledge that Romaricus had daughters, or do not hint that they are of the opposite opinion — except one, so far as I know, Mabillon, praised at num. 8.
[15] Wherefore, although we wonder at that silence in the contemporary biographer of S. Romaricus, it is admitted as most probable. yet it does not appear to be of such a nature as to compel us to deny what rests upon so many documents, and those ancient, and upon a long tradition. I say nothing of the fact that the same biographer is not only openly convicted of other omissions, as I showed at num. 9 and 10, but is also charged with error by certain writers; since he writes that S. Romaricus before his withdrawal from the court was visited with a monstrous injury by Aredius the bishop, which matter we have treated at length in vol. 2 of August in the Commentary on S. Arigius or Aredius, archbishop of Lyons, p. 543 and following. And I said that what is handed down of our Saint's lineage rests upon documents that are ancient too: for although I do not think the second Lives of SS. Romaricus and Adelphius earlier than the XI century, I see no ground for judging the same of all the other monuments which I have recited. There is besides that to the authors brought in by the abbess in the XI century to write the Histories and miracles of Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius as of true Saints of God, it was certainly free to search through the charters and monuments of every kind preserved from antiquity both in the ascetery of the holy virgins and in that of the men, whence they made up their lucubrations; and accordingly it is not to be presumed that they fraudulently invented such things, especially since they maintain nothing contrary to the more ancient writers, nothing contrary to historical truth.
§ II. The year of the Saint's birth and of his death uncertain; certain matters bearing on this are discussed.
[ ] The Saint was born between the years 620 and 627, Of how noble a blood S. Adelphius is believed to have sprung, the studious reader will learn both from the preceding paragraph and from the Life to be published in the second place, and from the annotations to be subjoined to it; but in what year he was brought forth into the light we do not find committed to writing. Nevertheless this did not happen before the year 620, if the author of the Life just praised writes rightly, according to whom, after Romaricus had dedicated his granddaughter Gebetrudis, together with the rest whom (as virgins on the Holy Mount) he had gathered, to serve the Lord for ever, … the happy woman (Asselberga) by a second birth … The little boy, whom
she had borne a little after, she sent to his grandfather to be baptized. For the beginnings of the said gathering of virgins are everywhere set about the said year, as will be able to be shown more fully when it shall fall to treat of S. Amatus; moreover, if the death of this Saint shall there seem to be attached to the year 625 with Le Cointe, or to the year 627 with Mabillon, consequently the birth of S. Adelphius will have to be fixed between the said years and 620, inasmuch as he was received from the sacred font by S. Amatus according to our second biographer; which same thing we dig out by a conjecture in some measure likely from the earlier biographer at num. 6, who notes the following: For so it came about by God's disposing, that on that day on which the festival of S. Amatus was kept, his Godson holy Adelphius should be buried in the same basilica with great honor. For Filiolus, in French Filleul, among the writers of the lowest Latinity designates a spiritual son by reason of reception from the sacred font, as Du Cange hands down in the Glossary.
[17] That he survived S. Romaricus by more than three years, The rest of the things worthy of note about the deeds of S. Adelphius we shall reserve for the said Annotations, and shall hasten on to the year of his death, no less obscure and difficult to determine than the year of his birth. In the Life of S. Romaricus gathered from manuscript codices in Nicolas Serarius, chap. 12, and in Ruyr, On the Antiquities of the Vosges, bk. 4, chap. 12 likewise, our Saint is written to have yielded to fate three years after the death of Romaricus: the same seems to be hinted in our second Life, however not so openly that the sense does not admit another explanation; which I observe because what is maintained about the said three years does not agree well enough with the chronology today everywhere received among the learned, if namely it be compared with what is known from other sources about the death of each Saint: which we shall easily perceive if we investigate somewhat more attentively the time of the death of S. Romaricus, so far as it bears on this matter. His contemporary author in Mabillon, 2nd century, p. 419, indicates that he died not long after he had returned from the court to his own monastery, whither he had betaken himself before he came to his last day, that he might announce to the king and to his nobles the danger or the calamity to come which they should beware of. Which the learned everywhere understand of S. Sigebert the king, whom Romaricus intended to forewarn to look to his son Dagobert, and not to trust too much in Grimoald, whose crime against Dagobert, after Sigebert's death, Romaricus had doubtless foreknown by divine light: this they confirm from the fact that presently there it is said that Grimoald, having embraced Romaricus with much reverence, gifts being brought, promised that he would do what was said — probably having been secretly admonished by Romaricus to keep faith with the king and the king's son, and to lay aside his wicked purpose of seizing the kingdom. Hence they conclude that Romaricus died in the time of king Sigebert.
[18] But this very thing is expressly handed down by the second and later biographer of the same Romaricus, contrary to what some write, is gathered from the year of his death, from whom Mabillon just praised recites the following in his Notes: The same father (Romaricus) died full of days in a good old age on the VI of the Ides of December, king Sigebert holding the scepter of the Austrasians, and Clovis that of the Franks. Nay, Serarius himself confesses in his Observations on chap. 12 that in his manuscripts Romaricus is said to have died when the sons of Dagobert were reigning, Sigebert among the Austrasians, Clovis among the Franks. But Sigebert, as it is agreed today among the learned, did not live after the Kalends of February of the year 658; therefore before this year Romaricus certainly departed, and, if Le Cointe, Mabillon and other moderns argue rightly, before the year 654, namely on the VI of the Ides of December of the year 653, which can be further discussed when we shall have come to the said day. It is enough for the present purpose to have reported those things from which it becomes manifest that the said three years conflict with the chronology today received, seeing that it is established that S. Adelphius was still alive in the year 665 and perhaps later. Which I now show.
[19] In the earlier Life of S. Adelphius the contemporary author writes, and after him the rest, and from the age of S. Waldebert, that the Saint, when he was shaken by a grievous disease, went to Luxeuil, and was there most kindly received by Ingofred the abbot, and commended to Emmo, a monk, the guardian of guests; and that, when he had stayed there for some space of time, he departed from among the living. But over the ascetery of Luxeuil S. Waldebert presided as abbot down to the year 665, as we said in vol. 1 of May in the Commentary prefixed to his Acts, p. 275, and as from the same Acts I now also show in a few words. S. Waldebert is there at num. 3 said to have been substituted for S. Eustasius, who according to the common opinion of the learned died on the XXIX day of March of the year 625; and at num. 8 the time in which he governed is thus designated: When for the space of forty years the glorious confessor of the Lord Waldebert had increased in goods and in the number of those serving God the place entrusted to him, most excellently ordered in every kind of virtue, adorned with many miracles of power he passed to the Lord on the VI of the Nones of May. Which evidently falls in the year 665. Therefore in this year Adelphius was still alive; seeing that in the same Acts of S. Waldebert at num. 10 the author proceeds in this manner: And so, the most blessed pastor Waldebert departing from this life (as we have said before), holy Ingofred, conspicuous and perfect in every kind of virtue, was solemnly substituted in his place.
[20] who was never But, thou sayest, many believe that Waldebert of Luxeuil was raised to the chair of Meaux, and they rest upon the Acts of S. Faro in Mabillon, 2nd Benedictine Century, and those of S. Agilus in the same, and also among us in vol. VI of August, composed by authors far more ancient than Adso, the biographer of S. Waldebert, who flourished only in the X century, and whose authority thence is lighter than theirs; and consequently what we have recited about Waldebert's long prelacy, about his death at Luxeuil, and about Ingofred his successor appointed abbot in the year 665, rests on no sufficiently firm foundation. I answer that the objected episcopate has been treated in our Work in various places, especially in vol. 1 of May at the praised Life of S. Waldebert the abbot in the Preliminary Commentary, and more recently in the Annotations on the Acts of S. Agilus in the cited volume, where we said that, if in fact in that century some Waldebert was bishop of Meaux, he was other than the Waldebert who succeeded S. Eustasius. Which appears to me altogether certain, inasmuch as I do not find a time in which he could have sat at Meaux. It is worth while, however, to weigh this very point somewhat more distinctly here, since on it depends the matter we are inquiring into. Let us hear the words of the biographer of S. Faro: It came about, he says, after the falling asleep of Walbert, bishop of this city, that Faro, God's elect, by the law of his consanguinity, as by right of inheritance, deserved a brotherly succession of the pontificate in this city of Meaux, as our account has found in the descriptions of the Life of the most illustrious Eustasius: for by most religious men a suggestion about him was sent to king Chlothar … that by his assent he should offer for appointment a most worthy pontiff … who … not only inclined his mind to consent, but even adjudged that it should be done.
[21] bishop of Meaux; To forbear the other observations which could be made on this text, it must be noted that Chlothar II is here designated, as is clear from the whole context of the Life, and from the fact that Faro or Burgundofaro presided over the church of Meaux long before Chlothar III. But that Waldebert, the successor of Eustasius, survived many years after Chlothar the second, who died about the year 628, is established from several contemporary writers, some of whom we shall presently give; the recited words therefore cannot be understood of him, nor do they stand in the way of our assertions from the biographer of Waldebert the abbot. Nothing more is proved by the Acts of S. Agilus, where this is found: Agilus … is entrusted to Eustasius … with … Agnoald and Waldebert, … who shone as regular masters of building and of teaching in the monastery which Fara their sister … built, of whom the one was ordained bishop of Lyons on the Saône, the other of Meaux. For since the biographer marks the times of the episcopate with no note, it can rightly be brought back to the same times to which the biographer of S. Faro has led us. I should not wish you, however, to infer thence that I hold it for certain that before the year 628 some bishop by name Waldebert or Walbert governed the church of Meaux; since on the contrary I rather approve the opinion of those who deny it, who contend that both biographers just objected were mistaken through a text of Jonas of Bobbio in the Life of S. Eustasius ill understood, on which matter let the curious reader see the Gallia Christiana most lately published, vol. 8, col. [ ] and following, on the bishops of Meaux. Now I produce certain contemporary authors, by whom it may be evident that Waldebert the abbot survived after the year 628, and did not occupy the see of Meaux before 665.
[22] S. Eustasius, on the testimony of Jonas in his Life at num. 17, as is proved from various when dying had left many monasteries either begun, to be completed, or, which he had conceived, to be begun, which his successor Waldebert established and built up. The same Jonas in the Prologue to the Life of S. Columbanus, inscribed to Bobulenus and Waldebert, thus speaks: I remember that I … promised that I would strive to weave with my pen the deeds of the kindly Columbanus, especially since … very many survive among you who would tell us things not heard but seen, or those which we learned through the venerable men Attala and Eustasius, of whom the first was his successor in the convent of Bobbio, the second in that of Luxeuil, over which you are the prelates. These things were not written before the year 639, in which, or in the next following, S. Bertulf, abbot of Bobbio, ceased to live, and Bobulenus was substituted in his place. In the Life of S. Germanus of Grandval a contemporary author among us at the XXI day of February writes that this Saint, when he was seventeen years old, went to S. Arnulph, who had already then, his episcopate laid down (after the year 625), taken up his dwelling in the desert, and was tonsured by him, and afterward joined to the ascetics of Remiremont. Then, a few things being interposed, the same author reports that S. Germanus betook himself thence to Luxeuil, at which time the father of that monastery was a man of note by name Waldebert, who, having perceived Germanus's virtue, willed him to be ordained presbyter, and afterward chose him out of his own brethren and appointed him first abbot of the convent of Grandval which he had founded, whose beginnings are commonly fixed to about the year 647.
[23] I pass over the Life of S. Salaberga, likewise drawn up by an author of the VII century, ancient documents; who mentions Waldebert, abbot of Luxeuil, about the year 640, and the privilege of Pope John IV granted about the same year, at the request of Clovis II, to the monastery of Luxeuil, in which — the words are of the diploma in Mabillon in the Appendix to vol. 1 of the Annals, p. 689 — the venerable Waldebert the abbot is now seen to dwell also with many monks. Yet I add a few things from the Lives of S. Bathildis the queen written by two ancient authors, and printed by us at the XXVI day of January. The author of the former, who is contemporary, and with whom the writer of the other agrees, has thus: The monastery which
is called Corbie, in the parish of Amiens, she (Bathildis) built by her own work, where the venerable man lord Teudofred — now indeed bishop, but then abbot — presided over a great flock of brethren, whom the aforesaid lady Baltidis sought from the monastery of Luxeuil from the most reverend man lord Galbert , formerly abbot, and wonderfully directed him to that same convent of brethren, which now still stands, and laudably. In these words we note two things. The first is that here we come very near to the year 660; for S. Bathildis built that monastery together with her son Chlothar, successor of Clovis II who died in the year 656, as Chlothar himself testifies in the precept concerning its foundation, vol. 1 of the Councils of Gaul, p. 500: We and our most exalted mother the lady Baldechildis the queen have ordered a monastery … to be built, out of regard for the eternal Godhead, in the place which is called Corbie, where the venerable man Theofrid the abbot presides. The same is openly said there, p. 502, by Berthefrid, bishop of Amiens, in the privilege of immunity granted to the men of Corbie, on the VIII of the Ides of September, in the VII year of Chlothar, that is, of Christ 662: The most glorious lord Chlothar the king, and also the most exalted lady Balthildis the queen, built a monastery … in the place named Corbie.
[24] but abbot of Luxeuil, The other is that each biographer of S. Bathildis calls Theofrid both abbot and bishop, but Waldebert simply abbot, as do the rest of the authors already recited; which would be plainly wonderful if he had at any time ruled the church of Meaux. Further, that S. Faro presided over the said church from about the year 626 to 672, the praised editors of the Gallia Christiana show with very many testimonies adduced, and all who handle the history of the Franks everywhere admit it; and indeed it appeared so certain to Le Cointe that, believing S. Waldebert must absolutely be numbered among the bishops of Meaux, he would have his life prolonged down to the year 680, in which, being substituted for Faro from the year 672, he should have held the said episcopal see. But this new fiction of Le Cointe we do not admit, says Henschen at num. 4 of the Commentary on the Acts of S. Waldebert, and, so far as I know, none of the learned has hitherto admitted it; all substitute Hildevert or Datlevert for S. Faro, of whom more will fall to be said at the XXVIII day of October, on which his name is inscribed in the Martyrologies.
[25] who died in the year 665: after whom S. Adelphius, There is nothing therefore which compels us to doubt of the death of S. Waldebert, undergone in the monastery of Luxeuil after a government of forty years, as we have it from Adso his biographer, who in his prologue mentions a volume more fully embracing the Acts of SS. Eustasius and Waldebert. From which we again conclude that S. Adelphius died after the year 665, the last of S. Waldebert, and that, according to the chronology today received, Serarius and Ruyr must be corrected, who hand down that S. Adelphius died three years after S. Romaricus. And I have said everywhere according to the received chronology: by which, namely, the modern writers bind the death of Clovis II to the year 656, but will have it that Sigebert was not among the living after 658, although they disagree as to the year. For if anyone should prefer to cling to others, who have judged that the life of these kings should be prolonged further, and whose opinion I for my part would not call altogether improbable, he could likewise put off the death of Romaricus further, and thus, through the three years alleged by Serarius and Ruyr — especially if these be taken a little more broadly — come nearer to the year 665, and in some measure reconcile the praised authors with our earlier biographer, who attaches the death of our Saint to the times of Ingofred the abbot.
[26] the prelacy of the convent of Remiremont being laid down, We meanwhile, if our Saint, as from what has been discussed becomes most probable, survived S. Romaricus by more than three years, believe that error of Serarius and Ruyr — or rather of the codices which they used — to have arisen from this, that the contemporary biographer of S. Adelphius sets out to narrate the things which had happened within the years of a three-year span, by which limits they supposed to be comprised the whole interval of time from the death of Romaricus to that of Adelphius. In which opinion they were perhaps confirmed by our second biographer, writing at num. 8 in this manner: Romaricus, when now the dissolution of his body was near, committed to Adelphius, beloved by him, … the care of the holy maidens, whom he himself, together with his most prudent sister, namely Gebetrudis, ruling all things manfully and disposing them with fatherly affection, governed piously and strenuously, though for a small interval of time. But they did not observe that it is not here said, nor indeed could it be said, that Gebetrudis governed the maidens either while Romaricus lived or immediately after his death; seeing that it is established that the Life of S. Romaricus was dedicated by the contemporary author to the abbess Cæcilia, who immediately preceded Gebetrudis. Moreover it is not far from the truth that the prelacy was laid down by S. Adelphius a notable time before he ceased to live, since, on the testimony of his contemporary biographer, as soon as the news of his death came to the monastery of Habendum … the illustrious man Garichramnus the abbot … with … throngs of monks went as far as Luxeuil. Whence it is not hard to perceive why it could truly be said that Adelphius held the government of the monastery of Habendum with his sister Gebetrudis for a small interval of time, however much he immediately succeeded Romaricus, and yet survived twelve years or even more.
[27] Further, whether our Saint prolonged his life long after the year 665 or not, no one will easily divine: he died in an uncertain year; on the day for however much we admit it to be true that Ingofred was presently substituted for S. Waldebert the abbot, we nevertheless do not know how long he was abbot at Luxeuil, nor whether S. Adelphius went to heaven from the said ascetery at the beginning of his government, or at the middle, or at the end. Wherefore, although most moderns mark about the year 670, and Le Cointe 680 — because, namely, for the reasons alleged at num. 24 he had to suppose Ingofred appointed abbot much later — we lay down what seems certain to us, that he died after the year 665. Not so great a difficulty offers itself about the day of his death as about the year; however much on that too there was formerly no agreement among writers. For Arnold Wion, bk. 3 of the Lignum Vitæ, in the Benedictine Martyrology; Dorganius in the Calendar; Saussay in the Supplement to the Gallican Martyrology; Ferrari in the General Catalogue; and others who followed Trithemius in the place presently to be indicated, record our Saint's birthday or day of deposition on the XXIX of August. On the same day Ménard announces him in the Martyrology, and Bucelin in the Menology; the latter, however, treats of the Saint more fully at the XI of September, on which the former also probably keeps his memory in this manner: In Lorraine, the deposition of S. Adulphus the confessor, warning moreover in bk. 2 of the Observations that on this day the festival of S. Adelphius is celebrated on the Holy Mount.
[28] We, as we noted in the Prætermissi at the said XXIX day of August, the 11th of September, believe that S. Adelphius departed from among the living on the XI of September, not only because his chief festival then recurs, but because this is openly expressed in the Martyrology of Remiremont in the words cited at num. 14, and chiefly because it is clearly deduced from his older Life: for according to it he died at morning time, and, the news of it being presently carried to the holy Mount, Garichramnus the abbot, the Saint's successor, rising by night hastened to Luxeuil, brought the sacred body thence, laid it up in the basilica of S. Peter, and at last committed it to the urn on the following day in the basilica of S. Mary, when the festival of S. Amatus was being kept, falling according to all on the XIII day of September: which arrangement of times sufficiently indicates that the Saint's death happened two days before, namely on the XI day of the same month.
[29] Mabillon thinks, in his Notes on the Life already alleged, not the 29th of August, that S. Adelphius is commemorated on the XXIX day of August because that day is perhaps the day of a translation. But seeing that none of the authors cited at num. 27 has mentioned a translation, nor on that day is any commemoration of a translation made among the men of Remiremont — of which sort, however, there is one on four days distinct from that in the course of the year — I should prefer to believe that S. Adelphius the abbot was once confounded with S. Adelphus, bishop of Metz, of whom, with the Roman Martyrology, there has been treatment at the said XXIX day of August in our Work. This conjecture of ours the praised Wion confirms in his Observations on the same XXIX day of August of the Martyrology: The birthday of Adelphius the abbot, he says, Trithemius notes on this day, in On the Illustrious Men of the Order of S. Benedict, bk. 3, chap. 310. Baronius, Molanus and Galesini treat of a certain Adelphius or Adelphus, bishop of Metz; yet whether he is the same as ours I do not dare to affirm, chiefly since I do not dare to affirm as the same as ours, chiefly since Trithemius does not explain the time in which he flourished. That he is not the same is abundantly established from this, that Adelphus the bishop died in the III century, ours in the VII; the former at Metz, the latter at Luxeuil.
[30] or the 2nd of September, as some hand down. Saussay in the Supplement at the often-named XXIX day of August did indeed distinguish the Abbot from the bishop; but, so far as I perceive, he confounded the place and the times in which each lived and died. Hear the eulogy: At Metz, the deposition of holy Adelphus, abbot of Habendum, different indeed in deeds and dignity from the bishop of the same name of that city, but joined to him in mind and equal in merits. Ruyr, part 1 On the Antiquities of the Vosges, p. 48, differing from all the writers hitherto praised, writes that our Abbot died on the second day of September. But I suppose this came about because, reading in Serarius, whom he follows, the day so expressed, II of September, he took Arabic numerals for Roman. For the rest, about the day of his death Mabillon, Castellan, and the rest of the more recent historians and martyrologists everywhere agree with us; but in the ancient classical Martyrologies our Saint's name nowhere occurs — however most ancient his cult may be, and, established in the course of time by Apostolic authority, may persevere down to our times with notable splendor on the Mount of Romaricus. Nevertheless I do not yet set about proving these last things: for since translations and miracles certainly pertain to his cult, and since about these, especially the translations, certain things must be discussed — namely about the occasions for which and the times in which they were made — and since for demonstrating these it is needful to bring forward accounts of good length, which it would not be convenient enough to insert in a Preliminary Commentary, it has seemed good to treat together whatever has been ascertained about his cult and posthumous glory, and to set forth first both Lives of the Saint.
Annotata* in the other: Bathildis
* ibid.: Walbert
THE SHORTER LIFE
By an anonymous author contemporary with the Saint himself.
From the edition of Labbe and Mabillon, collated with the manuscript of S. Maximin of Trier.
Adelphius, abbot of Remiremont, at Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy (S.)
BHL Number: 0073
A. By an Anonymous Writer.
The author's preface, The ineffable and most clement God Jesus Christ, when he was delivering to his faithful a rule of living, in a certain place a said: So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven
Wherefore he is to be glorified who grants the accomplishment for the doing of good. And therefore we have judged that those good and praiseworthy works must not be kept silent which in modern time toward the last day of his death our pious and most sweet father the lord Adelphius the abbot laudably performed, with the help of Christ, who said b: No man cometh to me, unless my heavenly Father shall have drawn him. And blessed Paul says c: Lest perhaps God give them repentance, etc. By which words it plainly appears that the good of repentance is mercifully granted by God to those who ask.
[2] Now therefore I shall set about narrating the acts of that same Adelphius the abbot. The Saint's virtues, For he was gentle in words, cheerful in countenance, most sweet to good men, mild and affable to all, most promptly intent upon the offices of God *, not covetous of others' goods, earnestly and sweetly subject to those who serve God, a follower of patience and modesty, laudably suited to all men.
[3] Then, if I mistake not, within the years of the last three-year space d, and his notable penitence. Being afflicted with sharp pain he makes confession, with him namely knowing it who alone knows the hearts of men, turning aside here and there from place to place through the wastes of the desert, he strove secretly by an abundance of weeping to quench the avenging balls of flame. And since the unutterable goodness of God is often wont to permit that a bodily infirmity coming upon a man should mercifully wipe away and purify the stains of the soul; when he was shaken with a grievous and troublesome pain, with groans and many tears he begged a remedy for his soul. Then, a priest being called, if he remembered that he had failed in anything, prostrate on the ground he made his confession, asking that a penance be imparted for the healing of his soul, and as a suppliant he said: My most sweet one, having received leave * from all the Brethren and Sisters, I wish and desire to hasten to Luxeuil e to the holy Brethren, since I purpose to make my confession to them likewise: at whose prayers I doubt not that I shall obtain pardon and remission of my sins. And without delay the effect followed his resolve.
[4] When therefore he had entered the convent, presently the holy abbot Ingofred f, a worshipper of God, together with his brethren, received him, embracing him as though for the winning of the rewards of eternity, as though a gift destined from on high; and there, being commended to the holy brother Emmo g, a monk chosen of God, he was loved with much and great zeal. For upon him then, that is upon Emmo, lay the care of the guests. That man was holy in work and pleasing in deed, who with the utmost zeal served holy Adelphius. And while for some space of time they enjoyed brotherly love toward one another, the last day comes, that his beloved ones should bury Adelphius the abbot, now spent. Then the hour of the day for rising had already come, and he said: At what hour dost thou wish, lord Emmo, that we should rise and go to prayer? Then he: Rest a little, Lord, until the signal be sounded, and let us go to prayer.
[5] Straightway Emmo went out, and a boy attendant remained there with him: where he dies. and lo, suddenly a mighty pain struck his arm, and at once with a hurried word he said: Rise, come hither, brother, for a most savage pain has struck my arm. And he tried to make the standard of the Cross upon his forehead and his body, and said: Christ, help; Christ, help. And this voice being uttered, and the sign of the Cross made by him, his holy soul went forth. Then beyond doubt I think there was fulfilled in him the Prophet's word, in which he says: Everyone, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. And that other: The wisdom of a man is sung at his going out.
[6] Straightway therefore a swift messenger came to the monastery of Habendum. The body translated to the holy Mount And presently the illustrious man lord Garichramnus the abbot, rising by night, went as far as Luxeuil with no small and mixed crowd of people and with throngs of monks, and, the body of the holy Man being received, with the relics of the Saints, with tapers and crosses, and with mighty triumph, wonderfully conveyed it to his urn in the castle of Habendum. For when the bearers had already crossed the channel of the Moselle, lo, holy Tecta, who is also Cebetrudis h, the abbess, coming, met them, together with the holy sisters bearing the relics of the Saints with tapers and crosses, and the people was divided troop by troop into three wedges. For the choirs of monks went bearing the little body of the holy Man, and went before all: and straightway at a distance followed the kindly abbess Tecta, going before the choir of holy virgins, and the common throng of the people took its way behind. For the voices of those singing psalms resounded on high everywhere in praise of God; for all that ground was filled with voices and with the chants of antiphons and of psalmody. For thus, by God's disposing, it came about that on that day on which the festival of holy Amatus was kept i, his Godson k holy Adelphius should be buried in that same basilica with great honor l.
[7] translated, before But after he was buried, at least some of the visions of him which appeared to certain of the faithful must not be kept silent. For before he was buried he was carried into the basilica of holy Peter, and there the watches of vigils were kept by those who passed the night. But how great a miracle and marvel was there heard must not be passed over in silence. And since the twin festal day of holy Amatus (as we have already said) and of Adelphius was at hand, when Matins were finished they began to sing the hymn of B. Amatus, which Adelphius from the first verse to the end continuously sang with them in a loud voice, and, his right hand being raised, tried to make the sign of the Cross. Indeed there was a religious man who was keeping vigil most earnestly beside his body. He alone heard him singing, and with tears calling God and lord Peter to witness, told us this miracle.
[8] and after his burial But after these things, the man of God Adelphius having been committed to the urn, a certain deacon, steward of the monastery, came into the square of holy Peter to dispense certain necessaries, and lo, he heard in the oratory people singing psalms as though keeping a festival. And they sang this verse: My soul shall live and shall praise thee, O God. Then he supposed that the handmaids of Christ were singing there, but after a little, having inquired, he found no man m present there. And on another day, when a certain handmaid of God was lying prostrate in prayer in the basilica of S. Peter, she heard in the aforesaid oratory singing as though of those celebrating Masses. And they sang: The just shall rejoice in the Lord. And other handmaids of Christ being called, both parties heard them singing with a loud voice, supposing indeed that the brethren were celebrating there the solemnities of Masses n.
[9] by prodigies Therefore I shall now set about narrating those visions which were seen of him, supported on such matters by the authority of B. Augustine and of the kindly Pope Gregory, who confesses that certain monks fell in with troops of enemies, and, being presently slain with a stake, those same enemies, as others reported, heard through the whole night their souls singing psalms there at their bodies o. For B. Augustine also relates that, when the souls of the Just have been joined to the Just in places of delight, leave being obtained, they return to visit those whom they held dear in this life, by revelations of dreams and by exhortations of consolation [p]: which we have found also to have been often done, through the books of the Saints.
[10] For neither must that be passed over in silence which we have learned of holy Adelphius. he becomes renowned. For a certain nun, a handmaid of Christ, filled with holy devotion, while she was intently singing psalms at his sepulchre, asserted that there was made within his urn as it were a gentle murmur, as of one turning to the other side. And presently that place shone, filled with unspeakable sweetness and an odor of fragrance [q]. For they were there rejoicing and as it were exulting with unspeakable gladness. These few things indeed have been narrated out of many, which the holy and kindly abbess Tecta, for the memory of the blessed man Adelphius, or for the example of the faithful, to be recalled in the course of time, ordered to be set in a little commentary and furrowed by the pen, with the help of almighty God, to whom be praise and glory and power always through the immeasurable ages of ages, Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
a. Matth. 5, verse 16.
b. John 6, verse 44.
c. 2 to Timothy 2.
consecrated, of which sort Serarius records that various ones existed in the same place, chap. 7 of the Life of S. Romaricus, gathered from manuscript codices, having thus: On the summit of the mountain Romaricus founded a church and various little oratories. Whence let us at the same time conjecture why the same place is called the square of S. Peter, namely from the chief basilica dedicated to that Saint.
p. This matter, or one akin to it, S. Augustine handles in various places. Let the curious reader see, however, his Letter 159, otherwise 100, vol. 2 of the Works in the new edition of the Benedictines of the congregation of S. Maur, col. 428 and following, in which the holy Doctor answers Evodius the bishop on various questions about dreams and apparitions of the dead, and brings forward a plainly wonderful vision, by which God permitted a man to be called back from doubt about the life of the soul after death, and which the Saint himself professes to have learned from that same man. Further, since the biographer adduces those Fathers to confirm the visions which he sets about narrating, doubtless what is contained in this number was written in inverted order, and ought to precede num. 7.
q. There is no just ground for doubting of the sweet odor perceived beside the Saint's sepulchre; but it could be doubted whether, when the nun believed that she perceived the murmur of one turning himself, her own imagination did not deceive her; chiefly because she had known beforehand that something like this had happened when S. Romaricus had been laid there, which his biographer in Mabillon thus narrates: After he was buried, a certain woman prostrated herself at the heads of blessed Amatus and Romaricus for the sake of prayer …: and straightway she confesses that she heard within the urn in which they rest each turning toward the other, and as it were an inward murmur of I know not what most famous joy.
Ms.: in modern times*
in the Ms. is added God*
Ms.: in all things*
read: commeatu*
THE SECOND AND FULLER LIFE
By a more recent anonymous author.
From a manuscript codex of Romarici Mons.
Adelphius, abbot of Remiremont, at Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy (S.)
BHL Number: 0074
A. By an Anonymous Writer.
The author's preface. Though I had often excused myself, most worthy and most excellent mother, thy authority at length impelled me to set about setting forth in writing the life and deeds of our most holy father and pastor Adelphius. Which indeed I have hitherto delayed to fulfill, not so much to avoid labor, as because, considering the slenderness of my wit, I acknowledged myself unequal to so lofty a subject; and so I preferred to be silent rather than to utter few things out of many, and those inelegantly; fearing this most of all, lest I should fall into the same reproach with him who, having undertaken this work, nevertheless, by the common judgment of all, carried it out with too little eloquence and fitness. But this one thing I would not dare to refuse to her to whom I profess that I owe all things; lest by that very act I should appear too modest and too little prudent, in wishing on an unfair pretext to shake off a praiseworthy and honorable burden. And so I have determined to obey thy commands, for no other reason than that, as I see thee intent upon caring for the profits of thy church, so thou too mayest be the cause why I labor to enlarge the glory of blessed Adelphius: looking indeed for this alone as the reward of my diligence or obedience, that thou shouldst regard not so much the smallness of the work and of my ability, as my pains and my mind, and that, if any blemish or error lurk in it, thou shouldst according to thy singular prudence take it in good part. Now then let us come to what has been proposed.
[2] Blessed Adelphius therefore, a Sicambrian by nation a, lofty in the birth of his nobility, The Saint's illustrious stock and happy disposition. shone forth in the earliest flower of his age as a most celebrated imitator of the good, whom the diligence of the heavenly goodness chose and forechose with such grace of love that the Holy Spirit kindled in him vehemently the fire of his love, and, building him a temple for himself, not only visited him with frequent light, but also, amid the enticements of the worldly path, having gained the palm of justice, he persevered a whole-hearted cultivator of religion. For, instructed almost from his very cradle in the lessons of letters, he directed the rudiments of his first disposition to Christ. Who, indeed, seizing the road of virtue, was zealous for nothing else than to despise things that fall away, to cling to things everlasting, and, being made over to monastic discipline, he happily took up the yoke of meekness. But the matter seems to require that we touch in a few words how that same venerable Father took up the habit of the aforesaid ordinance, so that how the unhappy province of the Sicambri lost a Man of such excellence and such dignity, who in the parts of the Vosges b shone serene as an excellent star — this, by God's disposing and with the helping suffrage of the same Patron, the following pages will declare in a compendious style of tradition.
[3] For the most glorious and most beloved of God Romaricus, when he was mighty among the chief men in the palace, supported by royal familiarity, and when he managed the king and the kingdom with strenuous governance, as one sprung of royal c lineage, took counsel, using a happy exchange, to set behind him things that would perish, and to cling to God alone. And he had at that same time three daughters, brought up chastely and liberally, as the reverence due to so great a man required, whose marriages, turning them long and much over in his breast, although wealth in goods and nobility in birth were amply at hand, he preferred rather to destine them to Christ with the flower of virginity. Since indeed in his heart the world had already withered, and to whom the pomp of palatine dignity had begun to seem vile, he resolved that the cord of his inheritance should be assigned to none but Christ. But a certain one of his daughters, by name Aselberga, not acquiescing in her father's devotion, without share of the inheritance and without her father's counsel, married a certain man in the parts of Sicambria, whose name was Bethilinus, a man of the highest nobility and much power d.
[4] [who, bidding farewell to the world, at the persuasion of S. Amatus had betaken himself to Luxeuil,] But meanwhile blessed Romaricus, not unmindful of the salvation he had already meditated, day and night thought of forsaking a king who must die, and of engaging himself wholly in the counsels of the eternal King; and although he busied himself in the court, which he frequented not out of desire but out of duty, yet at no interval of time was his mind deprived of the affection for that pious work. And when an opportune occasion befell him, he gladly laid open what he had long turned over in his mind. For when holy Amatus e was visiting the nation of the Austrasians for the sake of sowing the faith, by the cooperation of the divine clemency he turned aside to the palace of the venerable father Romaricus, by whom that excellent man, having received the food of eternal refreshment, came at his counsel to Luxeuil, and there taking up the rule of monastic religion, happily fulfilled what he had long desired.
[5] and afterward had founded a monastery on the mountain, But not long after, the strenuous executor of the condition he had taken up grew to such diligence of perfection that, glowing with heavenly desires, he sought the discipline of a more hidden life, whose undertakings his most sweet master Amatus earnestly favored. For where the Spirit was present as fellow-worker, he considered nothing worthy of reproof. With equal affection therefore, within the vast depth of the Vosges, they find a place fit for eremitic solitude, which we have learned was called by the ancients the castle of Habendum, in which, serving the King of kings with continual exercise, he built a monastery of maidens, and, performing the office of pastoral care, they keep watch with skillful industry to guard the flock: whence how great gain they brought back * to the highest Shepherd, and with how great glory of an angelic ordinance they enlarged themselves and their own, I forbear to unfold, lest a discourse of prolix digression, always urging the same things upon hearers, should breed weariness.
[6] [he gladly embraces Gebetrudis and Adelphius, his grandchildren by his daughter, sent to him.] But Asselberga, hearing that her father had renounced the world, sent to him her daughter by name Tecta, whom she had already borne to her husband Bethilinus, hoping in this way to draw from him that he would restore to the girl the pledge of the inheritance which belonged to her by hereditary right. But blessed Romaricus, beholding with cheerful countenance the first-fruits of his begetting, dedicated her, together with the others whom he had gathered there, to serve the Lord for ever; who afterward was called Gebetrudis, mother of the same monastery. But the mother, when she had learned what was being done with her daughter, being happy in a second birth, sets about again to bend his mind: but, as I think, not without divine prompting: for the little boy whom she had borne a little after, she sent to his grandfather to be baptized, and to be appointed heir of the possession left behind; whom the most serene father Romaricus, receiving with great joy, blessed the Lord, by whose protection he rejoiced that what his daughter had neglected was doubled by the service of a twofold offspring f.
[7] And he ordered the Boy to be made new by the water of holy Baptism, Adelphius is baptized, and committed to S. Arnulph; and to be assigned by name Adelphius, whom the lord Amatus, an unutterable man, receiving from the sacred font, became his spiritual father g. And forthwith, instructed by the lessons and most healthful admonitions of the glorious pontiff Arnulph h, he was nourished with such care and diligence that he savored nothing earthly, but hastened to heavenly things with the whole striving of his mind, and in him a specimen of his grandfather's virtue shone out. For he was cheerful of countenance, comely of face, gentle in words, fervent in religion, not covetous of others' goods, continually leaning upon those who served God, and, although he flourished in a boyish age, yet he pleased all by the honorableness of his manners. And as he advanced day by day in greater knowledge, he strove to surpass his tender years by more diligent skill. For he took heed lest either by the impulse of rashness he should break out into iniquity, or through negligence should stray from the path of equity.
[8] And so the most excellent father i of this so illustrious Youth, [adorned with many virtues and substituted as abbot for his grandfather Romaricus,] when he had learned by frequent report that he had borne much fruit in the house of God, for the love of that same most dear Son handed over to the monastery of Habendum a rich inheritance in the parts of Provence, though afterward vehemently laid waste by the Agarenes k. But after the departure of the most blessed Amatus, the most devout father Romaricus l, when now the dissolution of his body was near, committed to Adelphius, beloved by him, girded with the arms of chastity and continence and composed in every devotion of virtues, the care of the holy maidens, whom he himself, together with his most prudent sister, namely Gebetrudis, ruling all things manfully and disposing them with fatherly affection, governed piously and strenuously, though for a small interval of time m.
[9] Blessed Adelphius therefore, bereft of the presence of the most pious father Romaricus, governs holily. followed after the flock of Christ, which he had undertaken to foster, with such diligence that, as though breathed upon by a new spirit of religion,
he denied himself: and those over whom he was seen to preside he strengthened by the example of his holy converse. And so blessed Adelphius, worn down by frequent vigils and by long endurance of fastings, bridled the concupiscence of the flesh: but with the bread of compunction and the wine of tears he strengthened his spirit; and his limbs, lest they should fail for the pious work, he refreshed by a scantiness of food and drink only after sunset; for he ate that he might live; he did not live that he might eat.
[10] He gives himself to works of penitence, and, grievously sick, And as the ardor of a vehement heavenly love grew in him daily, turning aside through the more hidden places of the mountain he watered himself wholly with lavish showers of tears, and, shunning the eyes of worldly notice, he offered up to the divine sight the sacrifice of a contrite heart. For the more he advanced in the merits of virtues, the more, judging himself unworthy, did he ask pardon for what he had committed. And when he had now spent a space of three years n with wonderful practice of abstinence, so great a sickness of body came upon him that he foreknew that he would shortly be dissolved. And when he was long shaken by an intolerable pain, the Man of God, all the brethren serving the Lord under him being called, hastens to confess if he remembered that he had failed in anything; and, beseeching a remedy for his soul, he had many words of this sort: Most beloved brethren and most holy sisters, with your leave I desire to visit the brethren of the convent of Luxeuil: because I purpose to pay them likewise the debt of confession, at whose petitions I doubt not that I shall obtain remission of my sins. And the resolve of that determination is brought to effect o.
[11] he seeks Luxeuil, And when he had entered the monastery of the aforesaid place, the venerable worshipper of God Ingofred together with his brethren received him with very great gladness, and, rejoicing over him as over a gift bestowed by God, committed him to a certain brother by name Emmo to be diligently kept. This aforesaid brother excelled as chief in religion; and upon him too lay the care of the guests, who also with the utmost zeal served blessed Adelphius. When now for some time they had enjoyed brotherly love toward one another, on a certain morning the man of God Emmo restrained blessed Adelphius when he wished to rise for the sake of prayer, and going out left a boy attendant there with him.
[12] and dies piously. But forthwith a most savage pain struck the arm of father Adelphius, who at once, the boy being called, fortified himself with the sign of the Cross, as one about to fight against enemies, and, saying thrice, Christ, help, his most holy soul was loosed from the prison-house of the flesh. Happy, nay blessed, condition of dissolution, which so came as it was wished for, that it was rather a delight than a loss! For it was not to put off the punishment of his due condition that he called upon Christ in prayer, but because for the constancy of his excellent labor he was deservedly to be raised on high. Lest the crown of justice should be longer absent, he cried again and again: Christ, help; that thou who hast been the shining path of all who come to the Father, thyself leading, thyself presiding, I may be able to cling to thee, shining coequal in the Father's glory.
[13] The Saint's body On the same day on which blessed Adelphius departed from the world, without any intervening delay, a messenger came to the Castle reporting that the venerable Adelphius had yielded to nature, whose report, being swiftly spread abroad, everywhere struck the sheep with sudden grief. For they grieved to have lost the solace of a pious Shepherd, but they rejoiced for him who had attained the fellowship of angelic dignity. But the man of God Garichrannus, the fitting successor of the departed Father, rising by night with a great band of monks and of servants, makes his way * to Luxeuil, and, receiving the body of the most pious Confessor with most worthy array, conveyed it most honorably with the utmost reverence as far as the monastery of Habendum.
[14] [is brought back to the Holy Mount with notable pomp and is made illustrious by prodigies] For when those serving the blessed translation had crossed the river which flowing between waters the plain nearest to the hill of Habendum, the kindly Gebetrudis came to meet them, groaning, together with the holy sisters, who, shining like a fruitful olive in the house of God, arranged the brotherly funeral with a wonderful and unutterable triumph. For the people who were present, divided into the wedges of three troops, chanted the praise of God, and with hymn-sounding voices celebrated not the lamentation of obsequies but solemnities. And when all that ground was filled there with the voices of those singing psalms, he is borne away to the basilica of blessed Peter, and is there venerated with the continual observance of vigils by those who pass the night. And it happened, by God's disposing, that on that same night the festival of the most pious father Amatus fell, and when, Matins being finished, the bystanders had begun to sing his hymn, blessed Adelphius sang with them from the first verse to the end, and, his right hand being raised, tried to make the sign of the Cross for the grace of a blessing. Then a religious man, who was keeping vigil leaning beside his body, alone heard him singing, and, with tears calling the Lord to witness, told it to the brethren. But on the following day, all things being duly arranged, he was buried in a certain oratory near the basilica of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles. But after these things, the Man of God having now been committed to the urn, a certain one of the brethren, steward of the monastery, passing by the aforesaid oratory to dispense certain necessaries, heard the voice of one singing within: My soul liveth, and shall praise thee, O God: whence he supposed that some one of the sisters was singing there, and after a little, having inquired, he found no one present there.
[15] And on another day, when a certain handmaid of God was giving herself more attentively to prayer in the basilica of blessed Peter, is made illustrious, she heard there in the same oratory as it were people celebrating Mass, and they sang: The Just shall rejoice in the Lord. Who, having called to herself certain of the sisters, they heard together what she alone had heard before. Nor do we judge that that should be kept silent either which we learn was done suddenly when he had been buried. For a certain nun, filled with holy devotion, when she was intently singing psalms at his sepulchre, asserted that there was made within the urn a gentle murmur, as though Adelphius the confessor of God were turning himself to the other side: and presently that place shone, filled with so great an odor of fragrance that anyone might easily observe with how great merits the aforesaid Father stands before the Lord. Let these few deeds out of many of the blessed father Adelphius suffice, by whose most pious intercession may we deserve to obtain the grace of the eternal King, world without end. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
Since thou art begotten of the illustrious nation, Sygamber.
read: æstuans*
perhaps: they build*
retulerint*
tetendit*
POSTHUMOUS GLORY
Or an Appendix on his ancient and present-day cult, on the various translations and raisings of his body, and on the miracles.
Adelphius, abbot of Remiremont, at Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy (S.)
BY J. P.
§ I. The ancient cult; whether a monastery was consecrated to the name of S. Adelphius; four Translations of his relics; a various opinion of more recent writers about the first of them.
Straightway from his death he is venerated as a Saint. Such is the whole course of the Acts already printed in the first place that it bids us believe that our Abbot gave in his life such tokens of excellent sanctity that straightway from his death the faithful began to pursue him with that veneration and that honor with which we are wont to pursue the Saints. Certainly the translation of his body on the day after his death from Luxeuil to the Holy Mount, narrated there at num. 6, presents less the appearance of a mournful procession of men conducting a funeral, than of a triumphal train of men meeting a victor and applauding him, or of a concourse of men exulting with joy over a treasure to be carried home to them. Add that the visions or prodigies done before and after his interment, and reported by the contemporary writer of the same Acts from num. 7, certainly confirmed that veneration already held toward the Saint, so much so that they poured forth their prayers or sang psalms at that same sepulchre, as is read there at num. 10. Moreover that same veneration could not but be greatly increased by the most sweet odor perceived by the nun who was singing psalms and by the others who ran up.
[2] Augustin Calmet, History of Lorraine, vol. 1, col. 827, judges that the monastery of men of the Holy Mount was once distinguished by the name of S. Adelphius; That a monastery was dedicated to his name his French words run thus: The abbey of Romarici Mons, built by S. Romaricus on the mount of Habendum, which to this day bears the name of the Holy Mount, was likewise burned and plundered by those barbarians (he speaks of the Huns), and the nuns and monks were compelled to forsake this sacred place, and to betake themselves into the plain across the Moselle, into which they translated the bodies of their holy patrons Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius. They built there a church and two monasteries, the one for the nuns dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, the other for the monks under the patronage of S. Adelphius. The same, but a little differently, he repeats in the Chronological Series of the abbesses of Remiremont prefixed to vol. 3 of the same Work, col. CLXXXV, thus beginning: The monastery of Remiremont, situated to this day above the Moselle, … had for its founder S. Romaricus about the year DCXLV (a fault of the press is here doubtless, or of the pen, for in vol. 1, col. 388, he more correctly marks the year 620). Its earliest seat was on a neighboring mountain, which now has the name of the Holy Mount, … which S. Romaricus and the nuns he had gathered inhabited for a long enough time. This famous abbey was in its origin double, that is, there were on that sacred mountain two distinct communities, one of men, the other of virgins; the former had SS. Peter and Paul as patrons, the other S. Adelphius.
[3] is not solidly enough proved: A little differently, I say, he repeats it; for in vol. 1 he seems openly to speak of the monastery founded across the Moselle after the plundering by the barbarians, therefore in that place where the town of Remiremont now exists; in vol. 3 of the community or monastery existing from its beginnings, before the said plundering, on the Holy Mount itself. Moreover in vol. 1 he asserts that the monastery of men was consecrated to S. Adelphius, that of virgins to SS. Peter and Paul; but in vol. 3 he says that the monastery of men was dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, and that of virgins to S. Adelphius. This last, however, I understand more easily than the other, by so interpreting his words, namely, that by the former abbey or community, la première, he meant the more chief one to be designated, and by the other, l'autre, the less chief; in which sense he will rightly have said that the former, namely of virgins, was sacred to SS. Peter and Paul, and the other, the community of men, to S. Adelphius; if indeed that community ever passed particularly under his name.
[4] [the documents brought forward to this end perhaps treat of S. Adelphus, bishop of Metz.] The praised author in both places alleges in proof of his assertion the Life of Adelbero, the second of that name, bishop of Metz, drawn up by a contemporary and published by Labbe in vol. 1 of the Bibliotheca, where at p. 678 the said bishop, who flourished in the X century, is read to have consecrated abbots for many monasteries, and among these two for holy Trudo, two for holy Adelphus. He adds in vol. 1, col. 827, that he had read in the Necrology of S. Michael, Saint-Mihiel, an abbey in the diocese of Verdun, an abbot from the monastery of S. Adelphus mentioned in these words: On the IX of October died Notger, abbot of S. Adelphus. But those arguments do not appear to me clear enough for me to dare to assert without fear of error that by those words some ascetery, either of Habendum or of Remiremont, distinguished by the name of our Adelphius, is pointed out; especially since I dig out nothing akin to this from any monuments of the said places. What if the authors of the Life of Adelbero, and of the Necrology adduced — perhaps men of Metz by birth — meant to designate the monastery of S. Peter of Neuweiler in Alsace, which at the close of the XV century was turned into a college of secular canons, and called it from S. Adelphus out of affection for S. Adelphus, bishop of Metz, whose body we showed in vol. 6 of August, p. 505, to have been carried thither in the IX century?
[5] Certainly that the church of the said monastery afterward began to be called from that bishop is hinted by the Benedictine writers of the Gallia Christiana, vol. 5, col. 834, in these words: The church was first founded in honor of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul by the aforesaid Sigebald, to whom presently there was added another patron, S. Adelphus or Adolphus, bishop of Metz, whose body in the year DCCCXLVI Drogo, bishop of the same see, translated into this church. Nay, the author contemporary with the translation, among us in the cited volume, p. 511, in reporting the miracles done after the translation, plainly says that a certain man, having received a benefit, brought coins to the church of S. Adelphus. However the matter may stand, the assertion of the praised Calmet has not been sufficiently proved to me. Further, since what we have brought forward at num. 1 of this Appendix is such as easily to persuade anyone that the cult of our holy Abbot could not be more ancient than in fact it is, it does not seem needful to note more on this matter. Wherefore I proceed to other things requiring a somewhat fuller discussion. I speak of the translations; not indeed intending to discuss whether they truly happened, for the accounts of them will teach us that, but at what times and for what causes they were made.
[6] At Romarici Mons in the course of the year, on distinct days, commemorations or festivals of four translations are kept, Certain things are noted beforehand about the four translations about which certain things must be noted in general; and first indeed that among those translations there is not reckoned the first of all, when namely the funeral of the dead Saint was presently carried thither from Luxeuil, as we have often recorded. Secondly, that those translations are not proper to S. Adelphius alone, but common to him with SS. Amatus and Romaricus; inasmuch as the sacred remains of these three were translated together at the same times and for the same causes, and the histories of the same translations were written without distinction under this title: The Translations of SS. Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius; so that we can touch nothing here about our Saint without at the same time discoursing of the other two, and are compelled to treat here beforehand what would otherwise belong properly partly to the XIII day of September, partly to the VIII of December. Thirdly, that the several accounts of the translations, as also of the miracles which were wrought about the times of the same, are drawn from manuscript codices of Remiremont, as is noted in the transcripts communicated to us by Chifflet; yet with this difference, which I shall observe also at each, that some are fortified with the attestation of an apostolic notary, others not; some are left in the style of the first author himself, others rendered again into Latin speech by our praised Chifflet from the French version of Sébastien Valdenaire.
[7] It must be noted, finally, in the fourth place, that the aforesaid Valdenaire, festal at Romarici Mons with an annual commemoration. on the testimony of Calmet in the alphabetical Catalogue of the writers of Lorraine, and in the Series of the monasteries of the same duchy — of which the former is prefixed to vol. 1, the latter to vol. 3 of the History of Lorraine mentioned above — the aforesaid Valdenaire, I say, presided in the XVI century over Hérival, others write Yereval, in Calmet's French Hérival, a Priory of the Order of S. Augustine, which is one mile distant from the town of Remiremont. Whence it is permitted to presume that the said author composed his Work under this title, The Acts of the memorable affairs of the church of S. Peter of Remiremont, according to the Latin monuments found among the men of Remiremont. This is persuaded moreover by the Lessons of the Office proper to each festival of a translation, and to be recorded by us here and there where it shall seem needful, which agree greatly with his accounts. But why Chifflet sent us transcripts rather from the French lucubration of Valdenaire than from those Latin monuments already cited, I see no other reason than either that he could not obtain the originals of the same, or that he did indeed find them in the archive together with the manuscripts of Valdenaire; but, perceiving that these were greatly conformable to those, and moreover reduced to a better order, judged them more conducive to our Work. Now I proceed to the first translation.
[8] The History of this we have entire, fortified with the attestation of an apostolic notary, The account of the first translation drawn up by a nearly contemporary writer. and left in the original Latin style of an anonymous author, and one nearly contemporary, so far as his words at num. 7 permit us to suspect, which run thus: These venerable Confessors of Christ therefore were laid in the place in which they now, by the favor of the grace of their pious Founder, abide. For the second translation of the bodies and the building of a new basilica to that end happened while one of the nuns, already decrepit, was still surviving, who on that same mountain (namely the ancient seat of the monastery) had continually led a praiseworthy life in the service of the same (Saints). The words are from the history of the second translation, num. 9. Therefore not so long after the first translation the second was made, and the author of that History was living before the second happened, since, when he wrote, they were still abiding in that place in which the Saints had first been laid.
[9] About the time in which it happened, the opinion of Ménard, It is a constant tradition, and admitted by all the moderns everywhere, that the holy virgins removed from the mount of Habendum into the plain below across the river Moselle, and took care that the sacred remains of their holy Patrons should be carried hither, on occasion of the barbarians breaking into Lorraine and devastating the monasteries; but what the said moderns hand down about the time of that removal is confused and not consistent among themselves. Ménard, bk. 1 of the Observations at the VIII day of December, says that the convent of the Holy Mount was about the times of Louis the Pious translated to its foot into a most pleasant plain, through which the river Moselle flows, where now is the city which is commonly called Remiremont. Therefore before or about the year 840, in which Louis surnamed the Pious, son of Charlemagne — and doubtless the man designated by Ménard — is written to have died.
[10] of Serarius, Serarius, chap. 12 of the Life of S. Romaricus, gathered from manuscript codices, writes of the translations in this manner: When a barbarous and mighty multitude of the Huns was laying waste those parts, as also many others, it raged exceedingly also against the convents of holy Romaricus, both of men and of virgins.
But afterward, by the counsel and prudence of Theodoric the syndic, and by the liberality and munificence of Louis the third, one very ample convent was built beyond the Moselle, in which all the virgins might be contained, with a stately church which is called S. Peter's, and into this were religiously translated together the relics of the holy Romaricus, Amatus and Adelphius, on the XVII day of May about the year of the Lord DCCCCX, Drogo bishop of Toul being present. In which words, as will be evident below from our monuments of Remiremont, he wraps up the first and second and perhaps the third translation, but very confusedly and intricately, which he sufficiently indicates in the margin must be attributed to his manuscripts.
[11] of Ruyr, For where he reports the inroad of the Huns into those parts, he signifies that in his manuscripts the year 904 is noted; but where he afterward says that the church and convent were built by the munificence of Louis the third, he places this note in the margin: But he was reigning in DCCCLXXIX. Ruyr, in chap. 12 likewise of the Life of S. Romaricus, observing this doubt of Serarius, to whom he otherwise everywhere adheres, and perceiving the difficulty of the matter, entered on another way, and fixed the inroad of the Huns to the year 864, and affirms that the prince by whose liberality the structure of the new church is read to have been completed was Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald. But, besides that he brings forward no testimony of his assertion, not even thus does he dissolve all the difficulties, as will likewise be evident from the monuments just praised.
[12] The Calmet already mentioned more than once, vol. 1, col. 826 and 827, says that the Huns or Hungarians, of Calmet and others. as others everywhere do, were first seen in Lorraine about the year 910, and that for that cause the seat of the solitude of Habendum was left by its religious dwellers, both men and virgins. Hear the same man briefly and clearly expressing his mind before vol. 3 in the chronological series of the abbesses, col. CLXXXVI and CLXXXVII: The abbey of Remiremont, situated on the mountain, having now been destroyed and devastated twice or thrice by the Hungarians, who broke into Lorraine at the beginning of the X century in the years DCCCCX and DCCCCXIX, it seemed good to translate it to a more convenient and safer place, into the plain above the Moselle, where a city was raised, girt with walls, and where the abbey has stood down to now. Whence you may gather that according to this author neither did the Nuns forsake the Holy Mount, their first seat, nor were the bodies of the Saints raised from the earth before the year 910; which last he expressly states in vol. 1, where to the words which we recited at num. 2 of this Appendix he subjoins the following: On that occasion (of the removal and of the building of the new church and of the double monastery) the bodies of which we have already spoken were raised from the earth. There were present Drogo (from the year 905 to 921 or 922), bishop of Toul, and his clergy. But after these things he goes on to narrate whatever we shall see below to have happened at the raising and the first translation. About the same year for this translation Bucelin notes in the Menology, Baillet in the Acts of the Saints, both at the VIII day of December; Mabillon, vol. 3 of the Annals, p. 336, and in the 2nd Benedictine Century, p. 135, and elsewhere; and this opinion is, as it appears, the more received today among moderns; whether it is likewise the more probable, the monuments now to be brought forward will teach us.
§ II. The documents of Remiremont concerning the first and second translation are examined.
[ ] Chronological notes, deduced from the History of the first translation, The author of the History of the first translation, praised at num. 8, some things not pertaining hither being premised, and no mention being made of the inroad of the barbarians, sets about narrating the matter in these words: Now therefore, by the Lord's leave, we shall narrate that in the times of the most pious and most serene emperor Louis, who was a father of monks and a restorer of holy monasteries, the monastery of the aforesaid father (S. Romaricus) was renewed and removed to the place in which it now exists. From the emperor here named, if the writers praised in the preceding § saw this narration, there probably arose the differing opinion reported there about the time of the translation: so that some referred it to Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne; others to Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald; others to Louis the son of the emperor Arnulf — and these indeed because it was a tradition that the translation was made after the inroad of the Huns and in the presence of Drogo, bishop of Toul. Yet the eulogy of the emperor Louis wrapped in the words recited favors the opinion of the first: who was a father of monks and a restorer of holy monasteries. The very title of emperor favors it, which by the judgment of most learned men in no way suits Louis the Stammerer: but Louis the son of Arnulf was indeed substituted in the empire by the princes, yet had neither the crown nor the title of emperor, says Petau in the Rationarium Temporum, p. 433, and with Petau several others agree. Finally, the things to be brought forward at num. 23 and following, bearing on the third translation, favor it. Add that the Lessons of the Office expressly name Louis the Pious, composed according to the praised History of the first translation, and inserted both in the Proper of the Saints of Romarici Mons and in our manuscript codex, of which we gave an account in the Commentary prefixed to the Acts at num. 13, and which I wish to be understood whenever I shall either name or recite the Lessons. And so in this codex, at p. 12, after these things noted above in the margin: XVII of May, the first translation of the three Saints and of the whole monastery, there are subjoined three lessons, which for greater clarity we transcribe entire.
[14] a Compendium of which the lessons contain While Louis the Pious, son of Charles the Great, was reigning as emperor, who was a father of monks and a restorer of monasteries, the household of the holy virgins was led from the convent of Habendum to Romarici Mons. There were translated likewise the bodies of the blessed abbots Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius, which three, about two hundred years after their death, were found so entire as if they had then first put off the soul. In the uncovering of the tombs a clerk's thumb was crushed, and was presently restored by the Saints' help: then the bodies were washed with medicated wine; their beards were shaved with a razor as though they breathed, and each was wrapped about with precious linens and garments.
[15] of the Office When the sacred bodies were being laid in their coffers, the bier of blessed Romaricus was found shorter than was fit; evening therefore drawing on, and the nuns waiting at the bank of the Moselle for the remainder of the train, lest there should be delay, the bishop charged Theodoric the presbyter and Feroinus the deacon to cut the sinews beneath the knees of blessed Romaricus. Wonderful to say! Rosy blood flowed from the wound: the deacon, his thumb being cut and his hand swelling, scarcely escaped death: the presbyter, throwing away his knife, as though seized with madness, wandered about the walls of the monastery day and night, unceasingly crying out that word of the blind man of the Gospel: Son of David, have mercy on me; and so, thirty days being passed without food and drink, he breathed out his soul.
[16] proper to the 17th day of May, Doves, symbols of simplicity and charity and images of the Holy Spirit, Amatus had appointed to be kept in the monastery. These, flying over the sacred bodies in flocks through the whole journey, increased the pomp of the procession: the same, when they were carried in through the gates into the church, thronged about them not by flight but with their own steps: presently, when these were laid down, flying up to the roof of the basilica, and nests being built in that same place, they never returned to their old seats. Amatus and Romaricus were laid beneath the altar of the Virgin Mother of God; but Adelphius beneath the altar of blessed Paul the apostle: and this translation fell on the seventeenth day of the month of May, which day, famous thenceforth with an anniversary cult, the divine goodness has made illustrious by frequent miracles.
[17] they are compared with the opinion of Ménard. Things worthy of note upon certain circumstances of this translation we shall give in the Annotations on its fuller History: nevertheless it will be of use to have observed that, according to what is here reported, there prevails among the men of Remiremont the opinion of those who bind the first translation to the times of the emperor Louis the Pious, with Ménard. But neither does Ménard — who yet in bk. 1 of the Observations on the Benedictine Martyrology, p. 413, professes that what he had there premised about the Life, miracles, and translation of S. Romaricus was drawn from an old manuscript codex which is extant in the priory of the Holy Mount, and from another which is in the convent of holy Cornelius of Compiègne — neither, I say, does Ménard open his mind distinctly enough, when at p. 414 he speaks thus: Further, the convent of Romarici Mons, which is otherwise called the Holy Mount, was destroyed by the Huns, and remained deserted for more than two hundred years. But about the times of Louis the Pious it was translated, etc. See num. 9 of this Appendix. As though the sense were that it was destroyed two hundred years before Louis the Pious and remained deserted down to his times, which is in no way likely; seeing that the old monastery was begun only about the year 620, and Louis the Pious ceased to live about the year 840, and accordingly it would have been destroyed from its very origin; but that this is false is proved by this alone, that after the year 665 Gebetrudis presided over the monastery of virgins, and Garichramnus over that of men, on that same Holy Mount, as we have shown in the Commentary prefixed to the Acts. Let us grant, however — and I think this very thing was Ménard's mind — that both the monastery was destroyed by the barbarians and it was translated into the plain beyond the Moselle while Louis the Pious was reigning, and that after two centuries a new one was raised on the ancient mountain for men only, which today the Benedictines of the Congregation of SS. Vitonus and Hydulphus inhabit; yet he did not rightly enough, in my judgment, call those barbarians Huns; for of these there is here no mention in our manuscripts, nor can any inroad of theirs into Lorraine be joined with the times of Louis the Pious, as I shall observe more at large at num. 32, where, after setting forth whatever shall have seemed fitter for elucidating and distinguishing the three earlier translations, I shall set forth what appears to me more probable about their order and the series of their times. Have now a Compendium of the History of the second translation from the lessons of the Office to be recited yearly on its festal commemoration, as they are given in our codex at p. 13.
[18] When for many years now the bodies of the holy Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius had rested, separated in two chapels, An account of the second translation blessed Romaricus, appearing in sleep to a certain one of the nuns, now decrepit, who had inhabited the monastery of Habendum before the removal of the whole household of Virgins, said: Go, tell Theodoric, steward of this monastery, that he lay us together undivided: and, showing the place where they were to be laid, he vanished from her eyes. And when once and again she had put off obeying his admonitions, offering himself to her a third time, he pressed his finger upon her face, that by showing that mark she might win credit for her words.
[19] Theodoric acquiesced in the divine admonitions, and set about a new plan of the basilica, from the lessons of the Office in which the place destined by God for the pledges of the Saints should occupy (as was fitting) the more honorable part of the church. Frequent miracles made that structure illustrious: for often the workmen, either falling from a height or overwhelmed by the collapse of masonry or of roofs, escaped unhurt. A whole year the entire building took; and on the same day on which it had been commanded in the vision, it was finished; by divine counsel indeed rather than by that of Theodoric, prefect of the works, who declared that he had not even turned his mind to it, much less intended it.
[20] The basilica being completed, under the name and protection
of the most blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, of the 15th day of February it was dedicated with solemn rite. There were translated also into the place prepared, and at the same time laid together as had been divinely prescribed, the bodies of the three blessed Abbots, on the fifteenth day of the month of February; having first been wrapped in precious cloths and enclosed in most richly adorned caskets. Thereafter at their memorial divine flashes of light were often sent, most sweet odors poured down from heaven, lamps kindled of themselves, possessed persons freed, the blind given sight, the crippled and the weak fully healed, fevers, palsies, and other diseases driven away; especially in the twelfth and last year of the emperor Arnulf, of Christ (according to the common era) the eight hundred and ninety-ninth.
[21] agreeing with the longer account of it Thou hast here the whole order and manner of the second translation down to these words of the third lesson: Thereafter at their … etc., and so conformable to the fuller history of the same, to be printed below, that there is no doubt that the lessons were contracted from it. Further, the said fuller history of the second translation has been left partly in the Latin style of an anonymous author, partly given again in the Latin tongue by Chifflet from the French version of Valdenaire, praised at num. 7; each we shall more easily distinguish in the Annotations. And I said that the lessons already recited are conformable to the fuller history down to these words: Thereafter at their … etc.; because, namely, the miracles subjoined are prefixed to the more prolix history of the third translation, of which in the following §.
§ III. The documents of the third translation are discussed, according to which and to what has been examined above the order and times of the three translations are settled.
[ ] The account of the third translation The history of the third translation, with the miracles wrought before and after it, is drawn from the French manuscripts of Valdenaire, and brought back to Latin speech by Chifflet, if you except a few numbers, namely the first and the three last, which the same Chifflet not only mingled with the rest, and distinguished with a like note in the margin, Here it begins; here the style of the ancient author takes over; but moreover sent on a separate sheet, subscribed by the hand of an apostolic notary, with the same formula with which we said in the Preliminary Commentary at num. 6 that the second Life of S. Adelphius was fortified. These four numbers indeed, left in the original style of their author, I think must be esteemed the more highly, the more certain and clear the indications are which they furnish us, both about the time in which the miracles were wrought in the new church after the second translation, and about the age of the author himself.
[23] whose text is favorable to the received chronology The first, in each of our transcripts in plainly the same words, the author manifestly declares at num. 22 in the Preface, which he thus begins: After the true Light of the faithful came forth from the most sacred Virginal womb to save the world, in the nine hundredth year, miracles were first done in the new monastery, which is hitherto called the Mount of lord Romaricus, and is built in honor of the most glorious Prince of the apostles. A doubt has here naturally arisen whether we should read in the nine hundredth year, miracles were first done, or rather in the nine hundred and first year, miracles were done. We have expressed it in the former way, because in our twofold transcript we find not only the same words, as I just said, but also that they are marked with the same signs and punctuation. In whichever way it be read matters little. For neither reading helps at all the opinion of those who judge that the first translation must be put off to the year 910, or even later. Wherefore we proceed to the age of this author.
[24] He betrays his age at num. 54; for after he has set forth written by a contemporary author how wonderfully in the third year after the plundering by the pagans a man blind from birth obtained sight in the church of Romarici Mons — as we learned, he says, from his own report — he thus concludes: And lest this should perhaps seem incredible to anyone, we set the testimony not in the mouth of one, but of almost all who were then present; and we bring forward not things heard, but things seen, under divine attestation. Whence you may conjecture that the author was present at the events, and lived about the year of Christ nine hundred and twenty, about which we most probably discover that this prodigy happened, from the epoch to be assigned to the said plundering and to the third translation, an account of which I again set forth from the manuscript Lessons of the Office, plainly agreeing with the more prolix account of the same. These in our often-named codex, at p. 14, under this title, XX of August, the third translation, are conceived in the following words.
[25] The Hungarians breaking in, and ranging over Lorraine with savage devastation, is set forth in a compendium the virgins of Remiremont, counsel being taken, resolved to flee to the castle of Habendum, the ancient seat of their monastery, that they might set themselves and the relics of their Saints in safety. Of these a certain one, when she had halted before the steps of the altar, beheld three hands, which, stretched out over the very reliquaries of the blessed Confessors, seemed to show the way. By others also there was caught with their ears at the same sepulchres a gentle murmur and noise, as of men who, turning this way and that, exchanged talk among themselves.
[26] But when the venerable bodies were being carried to the castle, from the lessons the Moselle had to be crossed , which had then, swollen with rain-waters, overflowed far beyond its channel. Therefore those who carried about lighted waxen torches, having again and again fallen into the waters with their torches, wondered that not even these were extinguished. Some also of the holy virgins, plunged into the waters by the barbarians, emerged unhurt by the help of their holy Patrons. And this was wonderful, that, whereas the enemies' horses were wrapped in the waters up to the neck, yet those same waters scarcely reached to the knees of the throng that ministered to the sacred relics.*
[27] When that storm had passed over, thought began to be taken of returning. And so on one and the same day, the twentieth of the month of August, of the Office, of the 20th day of August both the bodies of the three holy Abbots were carried back to their former seats, and the body of holy Gebetrudis was first brought into the same basilica. Through those tumults, since all the supports of life whatsoever that were in store lay open to plunder, all the gold and silver of the sacred cases had to be spent upon things necessary for the sustaining of life. While these were afterward restored, the silver grew among the workmen's hands by an evident prodigy: and by very many other miracles thereafter the divine goodness bore witness to the merit of its Saints.
[28] Calmet, vol. 1 of the History of Lorraine, col. 827, after setting forth his opinion about the first inroad of the Huns into those parts and about the removal of the Nuns with the sacred relics from the Mount of Habendum beyond the Moselle in or after the year of Christ 910, Calmet's opinion about the time in which these things were done, as we reported from him at num. 10, proceeds to the translation contained in the lessons just recited, in these words turned from the French into Latin: Some years having elapsed, and the same enemies having again returned into Lorraine, the monks and nuns who very lately had fixed their seat on the Mount of Romaricus were compelled to flee with the relics of their holy Patrons and with their most precious goods to the Holy Mount, their earliest dwelling. Then there below in the Annotations, signifying that these things happened about the year 916 or 917, he cites Valdenaire and a manuscript of the Holy Mount. But at col. 828, that storm being dispersed, he says, the monks and nuns of Remiremont returned to their monastery; but how long the storm lasted, or to what year he judges the return, and consequently the translation of the relics, must be attached, he does not hint: nor do we dig this out even from Valdenaire and the other manuscripts of Remiremont, in which we do not even find mention of the year 916 or 917, assigned by Calmet, by a probable enough conjecture, to this flight to the mountain.
[29] opinion Certainly that the Hungarians about the said years invaded Lorraine Cardinal Baronius proves at the year 917 from the ancient chronographer Adam of Bremen, in the Ecclesiastical History reporting the following in chap. 47: In his days (those of Unni, bishop of Saxony) the Hungarians laid waste not only our Saxony and the other provinces on this side of the Rhine, but also beyond the Rhine Lorraine and Francia. The same Pagi confirms by the words of Hermann Contractus, writing likewise at the same year 917: The Hungarians, having overrun Alamannia as they had begun, destroy the city of Basel, and thence, Alsace being laid waste, they invade the kingdom of Lothair, doing many evils. These authors we too have followed in vol. 1 of September in the Preliminary Commentary to the Acts of S. Stephen, king of the Hungarians, where from p. 462 we treated at length of the first coming of the Hungarians into Pannonia, of their kinship with the Huns, of their various names, of their inroads into Germany, Italy, the Gauls and other regions, and of the disasters which they brought upon the Christians down to the middle of the X century; finally of their conversion to our faith, and of many other matters pertaining to that nation.
[30] very probable, Meanwhile, although I judge that by a probable enough conjecture the said flight of the men of Remiremont to the mount of Habendum was fixed by the praised Calmet to the year 916 or 917, yet I should not dare to vend this as a thing undoubted; because, namely, another inroad of the Huns or Hungarians about those regions had gone before, about the year 910, as Calmet himself hands down with Mabillon, Bucelin, Baillet and others, and as Pagi thus shows with testimonies adduced in the Critica at the same year, num. 7: The Continuator of Regino writes: "The Franks, having engaged the Hungarians on the border of Bavaria and Francia, were pitiably either conquered or put to flight." The same has Hermann Contractus from the edition of Canisius: "The Hungarians, making for Francia, battle being joined, had the upper hand." Where by the name of Francia he understands Eastern Francia, over which Louis, king of Germany, presided. To these can be added two Chronicles of the monastery of S. Gall in Du Chesne, vol. 3 of the Writers of Gaul, pp. 466 and 471, of which the first has thus: DCCCCX. The Hungarians fought with the Alamanni and the Franks and conquered them. The other thus: DCCCCX. The Agarenes fought with the Alamanni and the Franks, and conquered them. In this Chronicle the Hungarians everywhere pass under the name of Agarenes. There could moreover be added the Chronicle of Hildesheim in Du Chesne in the same place, p. 504, having thus: DCCCCX. King Louis fought against the Hungarians. DCCCCXI. The Hungarians laid waste Francia and Thuringia.
[31] And so, if, Louis king of Germany having been conquered about the year 910, the Hungarians in the following year also laid waste Francia, as has just been said, yet not certain. and penetrated into Lorraine itself, as Calmet affirms in vol. 1, col. 828, I do not see why it cannot be said that at that very time, after the new monastery had been devastated, the nuns were compelled to flee back to the ancient dwelling of Habendum, and there lay hid among the mountains until the first and second inroad of the barbarians had passed by. For neither can I assent to the praised historian, or to others who are of opinion that the convent of Habendum was inhabited by the nuns down to the year 910, after which they first came down from the Holy Mount into the plain below and there fixed their seat beyond the Moselle; inasmuch as these things seem to me manifestly to conflict with the manuscript documents of Remiremont mentioned and recited here and there, to which for my part I have thought I must adhere until more certain things be brought forward to the contrary.
[32] According to our manuscripts the first translation happened before the year 840, Wherefore, that I may reduce to a compendium
what has hitherto been discussed about the translations: the first happened, according to our manuscripts, in the time of Louis the Pious, king and emperor, that is, before the year 840; but on what occasion is not expressed. For my part I shall not readily admit that this was done on account of the Huns or Hungarians pressing in or threatening, as tradition has it; seeing that Charlemagne, in the war which by himself and by his son Pippin he waged against them for the space of eight years at the close of the VIII century, destroyed nearly all of them to the point of extermination. Hear Einhard, Charles's biographer: At length in the eighth year the war was finished. How many battles were fought in it, how much blood was shed, Pannonia, empty of every inhabitant, bears witness, and the place in which the palace of the Chagan was, so deserted that not even a trace of human habitation appears in it. In this war the whole nobility of the Huns perished, all their glory fell away, all their money, and the treasures heaped up over a long time, were plundered, etc.* Whence it is in no way likely that under Charles's successor they broke into Lorraine. I should say rather that that tradition flowed from the third translation, when the nuns, the inroad of the Huns being ended — on account of which they had fled to the Holy Mount — removed back into the plain below beyond the Moselle: or, if the tradition must absolutely be stood by for the first translation as well, I should prefer to believe that occasion for this was given by other barbarians, on whom the name of Huns was fastened by the writers.
[33] The epoch of the second translation we enclose within broader limits, the second before 899; namely between the years 840 and 899, in which last, according to what is reported at num. 23, the new basilica beyond the river Moselle certainly existed. For we cannot divine how great a space of time these words embrace, when for many years now, etc., expressed in the lessons and in the manuscripts of Valdenaire. However, those limits could be narrowed, if we should believe that the building of the new basilica was rightly bound by Serarius to the times of Louis the third, and that by him — as Ruyr understood — he designated Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, snatched from among the living in the year 879. Certainly this is persuaded by the age of the nun who in all our manuscripts is read to have inhabited the monastery of Habendum before the first removal, and to have been still surviving when the new basilica, finished within one year, was being founded.
[34] the third between about the years 910 and 920. Finally the third translation — namely the return of the holy virgins with the sacred remains — we place between about the years 910 and 920, both because from the tradition which most have wrongly interpreted of the first or second translation we learn that the bodies of the Saints were brought into the basilica of Remiremont, doubtless restored anew, in the presence of Drogo, bishop of Toul, who from the year 905 to 921 or 922 occupied that chair; and because the contemporary author, praised at num. 24, affirms that he was present at a miracle which was wrought in the said basilica in the third year after the plundering by the pagans. This more distinct arrangement of the three translations, as drawn from the very bowels of the documents of that most illustrious convent, has been set forth by us as more probable than the rest; I should have called it almost historically certain, had not one thing held me back, from which I am compelled to confess that the said documents are not wholly free from every blemish of error, as will presently be evident.
[35] A fault which crept into the said manuscripts In the history of the miracles and of the third translation, which, besides the numbers named above, we noted was drawn from the French manuscripts of Valdenaire, Chifflet, his translator, left in the French tongue only num. 52, in which is narrated the wonderful healing from fevers of one of the chief nobles of the emperor Lothair, and whose beginning runs thus: In the year of Salvation about eight hundred and sixty, and before the monastery was removed, Lothair the emperor, eldest son of Louis the Pious, first king of Lorraine, and from whom that land got its name, wished to visit the churches of the Holy Mount, etc. Which is utterly contrary to the epoch of the first removal established above under the empire of Louis the Pious. This the praised Chifflet also observed, and for that very reason marked the said number — faithfully transcribed in French as he had found it — with the following annotation in the margin: If it be permitted to guess, I judge that these things happened to one of the emperor Lothair's courtiers when the monastery had already been removed.
[36] is corrected, Nay, if it be lawful for me too to guess, I should judge that those chronological notes did not come from the pen of the contemporary author; but either from Valdenaire's own store, or rather from the rash presumption of another writer little versed in historical and chronological matters, who, intending to explain the matter by expressing the circumstances of persons and times, entangled it the more. This I set forth the more confidently, because in words so few I detect another thing, if not manifestly erroneous, at least much suspect of error. For Lothair the emperor, son of Louis the Pious, who is asserted about the year 860 to have visited the churches of the Holy Mount, five years before — namely in the year 855 — put on the monk's habit in the monastery of Prüm, and in the same house put off the man toward the end of the month of September. I pass over the fact that Lorraine seems rather to have derived its name from Lothair the king, son of the said emperor, as Petau, Calmet and others observe, than from the emperor himself. For the rest, what is contained in the French number now discussed Chifflet subjoined also in Latin, yet with the circumstances omitted which here raise a difficulty; but whether he received them from elsewhere or not, he did not indicate; I meanwhile, letting the French go, shall print this alone.
Annotatatrajiciendus, qui tumidus* (to be crossed, which, swollen)
* of the king of the Huns
§ IV. The History of the fourth translation is set forth, and certain matters concerning it are inquired into.
[ ] The History of the fourth translation, The three earlier translations having now been placed in the order and series given, there remains to be set forth the fourth, and that the most celebrated of all, and the fittest for demonstrating the notable cult of S. Adelphius and of the other Saints. Its memory recurs at Romarici Mons at the XIII day of November, as is noted in our manuscript codex, p. 15, where likewise three Lessons of the Office are prescribed, embracing the occasion, time and manner of the translation; these, however, I do not transfer hither, inasmuch as they differ little or nothing, and that only in words, from another account of the same copied by the often-praised Chifflet from the monuments of Remiremont and communicated to us, which, because it is more succinct than the accounts of the other translations, we insert entire in this paragraph.
[38] When holy Pope Leo the ninth, still then retaining the name and dignity of bishop of Toul, or of the solemn raising of the bodies, had come to his church of Toul; and there had translated with great splendor and array the sacred limbs of S. Gerard, bishop of Toul (whom a little before, by divine admonition, he had entered at Rome in the Canon of the Saints), taken out of their old tomb, into a precious reliquary; the venerable Oda, abbess of Remiremont, with pious zeal procured like honors for her own Patrons also. And so at her request holy Leo appointed Hugh, archbishop of Besançon, and Udo, primicerius of the church of Toul, to go from Toul to Romarici Mons: who, a judicial inquiry having been instituted concerning the virtues and miracles of the holy Romaricus, Amatus, Adelphius and Gebetrudis, first raised their sacred bodies with solemn pomp from the lowly place in which they had hitherto rested into a loftier one.
[39] Then they ordained that their histories and miracles, as of true Saints of God, made in the year 1051, should both be written down and inserted into the divine Offices, by the authority of the Roman Pontiff by whom they had been sent. This translation was celebrated on the Ides of November, in the year of the Incarnate Word one thousand and fifty-one, the third of Pope Leo the ninth, in the presence, among very many others, of Gerard, abbot of Luxeuil; and in the raising of the relics this order was purposely kept, that a beginning should be made from holy Romaricus, as founder; then it should proceed to holy Amatus; from him to blessed Adelphius; and last to holy Gebetrudis. All things here are set forth so clearly, so accurately, and so conformably to ecclesiastical history — as will be evident to one who consults it — that not even a tittle seems to lie hidden that is liable to the most sharp-eyed criticism.
[40] Nevertheless, when certain moderns handle these things, not by Pope Leo IX himself, they speak in such a way that you may suspect that something was passed over by our author which would have contributed not a little to the splendor of the matter narrated; namely, that the raising and translation of the bodies was performed not by legates only, but by the Pontiff himself in his own person. Thus Mabillon, 2nd century On the Acts of the Saints of the Order of S. Benedict, p. 135, in the annotation on the Life of S. Amatus: Afterward, he says, the body, having been placed there in a more fitting place by the hands of S. Leo IX, Pope, is venerated with special honor. Further goes Baillet, vol. 3 of the Lives of the Saints, treating at the VIII day of December of S. Romaricus, and writing thus in French: The holy Pontiff Leo IX, still then bishop of Toul, returning into Lorraine in the second year of his Pontificate, inquired more particularly into his (S. Romaricus's) virtues and especially into his miracles. Then he completed his canonization by the rite usual in those times, that is, a simpler one, and without the ceremonies afterward introduced. His body, and that of S. Amatus his predecessor, and of S. Adelphius his successor, he raised to a more honorable place in the church.
[41] who nevertheless about that time To both the biographers just recited the way had been paved by Ruyr, On the Antiquities of the Vosges, part 1, bk. 4, chap. 12, in the following words, likewise turned from the French into Latin: Afterward blessed Leo, Pope, the ninth of that name, when, the Alps being crossed, he had come to Toul, and had appointed Udo, primicerius of the cathedral church of Toul, to go to Romarici Mons to inquire into the genuineness of the Lives of the aforenamed Fathers (Romaricus, Amatus and Adelphius), entered them in the Roll of the holy Confessors: with the greatest splendor, pomp and reverence that could be. Indeed, although I cannot assent to all these things, the praised authors, in writing thus, were not without a foundation in some measure likely. For it is established that S. Leo about the year 1050 or 1051 not only visited his own church of Toul, but also that of Remiremont; and that he consecrated the latter with Pontifical ceremonies; we have a witness beyond all exception, B. Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, then the holy Pontiff's companion on the journey. He in his 13th Letter, in d'Achery, the collector of his Works, answering John, archbishop of Rouen, upon certain questions about the rite to be kept in the dedication of churches, produces also to our purpose the following example: Holy Leo the Pontiff, supreme Bishop of the Roman see, dedicated, in my presence, the church of Remiremont, and completed without a chasuble all that the order had required to be done before Mass.
[42] consecrated the church of Remiremont, Nevertheless, since blessed Lanfranc mentions the dedication only, and our author, who otherwise expresses so accurately the circumstances of times and persons, is deeply silent about S. Leo's presence, we shall here too adhere to his account. There is besides that the said Pontiff, as we showed from Hermann Contractus, a contemporary writer, in vol. 2 of April at the XIX day of the month in the Commentary prefixed to his Acts, did not go to Toul until the council of Vercelli was finished, about the month of September of the year 1050; and likewise, the assembly held at Augsburg being concluded
about the month of February of the year 1051, he set about his return to the City, where amid the sacred solemnities of Masses on the day of Easter he freed a woman possessed by a demon, and after Easter gathered a synod, and accordingly was not present at the festival of the translation celebrated in the church of Remiremont in the month of November next following; since neither in this year nor in another down to 1054, in which he went to heaven, is he read to have returned into Lorraine.
[43] Therefore I think the whole matter was carried out in this order: that within the said months he raised the body of S. Gerard at Toul, and consecrated the church at Romarici Mons, but by his legates furnished with his authority. and that on this occasion he was asked that he would also enter SS. Amatus, Romaricus, Adelphius and Gebetrudis in the canon of the Saints, and solemnly raise their bodies: but that this business, probably on account of the shortness of time, he committed to Hugh and Udo, fortified with Apostolic authority, by whom afterward it was duly carried into execution. Whence not undeservedly Ruyr, Baillet and others called it a canonization, which our author set forth under the title of a translation or raising only. However much he too sufficiently hints this very thing at the beginning of his account, saying that like honors were procured by the abbess Oda for her Saints as the Pontiff had bestowed on S. Gerard, a little before inscribed in the Roll of the Saints. Nay, this very thing the whole series of the matter transacted indicates: an examination instituted beforehand; virtues and miracles approved; the sacred bodies raised with great splendor and solemnity; Offices with proper lessons decreed to the Saints; and all these by legates commissioned to it by the Roman Pontiff himself and furnished with his authority.
[44] We have hitherto reckoned only four translations, because of these, so far as we learn from the lessons of our manuscript codex, there is a special memory in that most noble convent; Certain other less celebrated translations. yet two made more recently I find in the manuscripts of Chifflet. The former is fixed to the year 1567 and is proper to S. Romaricus alone, and consequently does not pertain to this place: the other is common to SS. Amatus and Adelphius, and of it the praised Chifflet sent the following account: MDCXXXIV, VIII of October, Sunday, Philippe de Ligniville de Tantonville, provost of S. Deodatus (Saint-Dié, a town of Lorraine on the river Meurthe and at the roots of the Vosges mountain near the borders of Upper Alsace) translated the bodies of S. Amatus and S. Adelphius from their old cases into new ones covered with silver: which were placed above the altar of S. Romaricus in niches prepared on either side; the casket of holy Amatus indeed on the Epistle side, and that of holy Adelphius on the Gospel side.
§ V. The present-day cult very solemn; Offices and Masses.
[ ] The annual festivals of the four translations with a proper Office, What has hitherto been brought forward about the antiquity of his cult and the translations abundantly makes up for the deep silence about S. Adelphius among the older martyrologists, indicated by us in the Preliminary Commentary at the last number. It remains that we dispatch what pertains to the present-day cult. That festal commemorations of the four translations are kept yearly we have hinted above; but with what solemnity they are performed the Proper of the Saints of the notable church of S. Peter of Romarici Mons, praised several times, teaches us, composed after the form and rite of the Roman Breviary. For in it, to follow the order of the little book itself, at p. 22 the following first occurs: The XV day of February. On the feast of the second translation of the holy abbots Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius. Greater double. Then the Office to be recited is prescribed and set forth, of which nearly all the parts are proper — Antiphons, Chapters, Hymns, Psalms, Lessons, etc. — and those of these which here and there really agree with the common Office nevertheless differ in position. It is worth while to transcribe a few of the chief. At Vespers. Chapter, Ecclesiasticus 44. These are men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed: with their seed good things continue; their grandchildren are a holy inheritance. There follows a Hymn not inelegant.
[46] whose Hymns On the translations of the three Abbots:
O Amatus, teacher and guide of father Romaricus, First founder of our house. Amatus, renowned for signs and virtues, Ever intent, help thy clients.
O Romaricus, despiser of the world's vanity, Once a Count shining in purple, Afterward poor for the love of Christ, look here upon us And fill the minds of thy suppliants with the love of Christ.
O great Adelphius, happy in so many divine * fathers As masters, thyself the divine Doctor Of the sacred companies, teach us too who are ignorant, And imbue us with heavenly disciplines.
O holy triad of Fathers, holy triad of Pastors, Go on, we pray, to have mercy on thy flock; That, clinging earnestly to thy footsteps, It may dwell with thee in the blessed pastures in heaven.
To the Trinity be everlasting glory, Honor, power, and jubilation, In the Unity which governs all things Through the ages of all eternity. Amen.
Prayer. Be present, O Lord, to our supplications, which we bring on the translation of thy blessed confessors Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius: that we who, etc.
[47] are given here, At Matins. Hymn.
Happy Souls, who above the heavens, Set amid the choirs of the wingèd, Gather joys that shall endure in the sky, Free from mortal change!
We behold your bones laid in sacred cases, Which neither devouring time, nor the mad fury Of soldiers ravaging on every side With flames and swords has taken away.
Be the care of the ancient household yours, And the place of your consecrated deposit pleasing, That it may ring with an easy song of praises, All harms being driven off on every side.
Thee, O highest and one Godhead, we beseech, That by the prayers of the Saints thou wouldst make us also As suppliants sing psalms in the heavenly fatherland With eternal songs to thee. Amen.
In the first Nocturn there are set forth lessons from chap. 44 of Ecclesiasticus: Let us praise glorious Men, etc. In the second, those which we gave at num. 18. But in the third, on the Gospel according to Matth., chap. 19: Behold, we have left all things; the lessons are taken from the Homily of S. Augustine the bishop on Psalm 103, sermon 3: Where shall the sparrows build their nests? etc.
[48] and a proper Mass The same Office is read with a double rite of the second class at the XVII day of May, on which the memory of the first translation recurs. The same with a greater double rite at the XX of August, on which the third of the holy Abbots and the first of S. Gebetrudis, and at the XIII of November, on which their fourth and her second translation is celebrated: but on each day proper lessons are appointed for the second Nocturn from the History of the translations; for the third Nocturn from various homilies of the holy Fathers. The Mass likewise on the said festivals is proper, gathered nevertheless from various parts of the common of Saints into this order. Introit. The wisdom of the Saints. Prayer. Be present, O Lord. Epistle. Brethren, remember your prelates. Gradual. God is glorious in his Saints. Gospel. Behold, we have left all things. Offertory. The Saints shall exult in glory. Secret. We offer thee, O Lord, the gifts of our devotion. Communion. God is wonderful in his Saints. Postcommunion. May the venerable Translation of thy saints Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius gladden us, O Lord; and may it, freeing us from the bonds of our sins, carry us over to the dwelling of eternal blessedness. Through our Lord. But at the days XX of August and XIII of November the name of S. Gebetrudis is inserted into the Prayers.
[49] These things certainly sufficiently show the notable cult which those Saints have in that most illustrious convent. are kept. One thing I add, which likewise pertains to the cult of all in common, and which Calmet as most worthy of report inserted in vol. 1 of the History of Lorraine, col. 827, and which is conceived in the French tongue in these words: In memory of that headlong and nocturnal flight (see § III of this Appendix, where the third translation was discussed) the nuns instituted a Mass on the XX day of August about midnight, which they call the pitiful or mournful Mass (commonly la Messe piteuse): because they sing it, in the parish church of Romarici Mons, with a lowered and mournful voice, as persons set in peril and fear, and not daring to raise their voice. Thus he. I should not wish to deny that this was once customary there; nor yet should I dare to affirm that it is continued down to our times, the writers and other monuments here being silent. I proceed to what the Proper of the Saints hitherto praised sets forth about the particular cult of S. Adelphius.
[50] It has thus at p. 77: The XI day of September. On the feast of S. Adelphius the abbot. [The feast of S. Adelphius is celebrated on the XI day of September with an Octave; a Hymn] Double of the second class with an Octave. An Office from the common of confessors not pontiffs is prescribed, except the Hymn at both Vespers and at Matins, the Prayers, and the Lessons of the second and third Nocturn, which are proper. I set first a Hymn not inferior in elegance to those given above.
Noble Sicambrian of lofty race, Blind Cupid did not harm thee, Nor the poisoned hiss of the court Ill-flattering.
Thy mother sent thee, an infant, to father Romaricus, thy pious sire: by a better rite He offered his tender Grandson At the divine altars.
To thee, reborn at the springs of the sacred water, Amatus is the baptismal father of happy Omen, and he sets on the Boy the happy name Of Adelphius.
Thereafter thy grandfather hands thee over to the prelate Arnulph to be instructed; and the holy bishop Shapes the ready Child by gravity of manners And by his voice.
51] Giving thy labor to such masters, [from the Office,Thou renderest back an Arnulph in piety, in judgment, In manners; and an Amatus too, mingled With Romaricus.
Come now, O Adelphius, joined to such great Fathers, thyself the Father of our company, Look, we pray, with gentle eyes Upon our hills.
Grant us ever to be cherished by thy zeal, And, through the rough places of mortal life, At last to reach by a straight path The heavenly seats.
May this be granted us by the blessed Godhead Of the Father and of the Son, and likewise of the Holy Spirit, whose glory may resound Through all the world. Amen.
[52] and a proper Prayer. Receive also the Prayer which is now read: O God, who didst adorn blessed Adelphius, our father, consecrated to thee from infancy, with excellent gifts of graces: by his intercession, we beseech thee, make us ourselves an eternal offering to thee. Through our Lord. And I said, which is now read: for that another was once read I gather from the manuscripts fortified with the attestation of an Apostolic notary, and of which there has at times been mention in the course of this work, where I find the following: O God, who among the peoples of divers nations hast appointed that there be teachers of the true faith; grant, we beseech thee, that all who are reckoned by the Christian profession may, by the intercession of blessed Adelphius thy confessor, obtain the joy of prosperity and the glory of future blessedness. Through our Lord. To transfer hither the Lessons of the second Nocturn, wont to be recited both on the feast itself and on the octave day, would be superfluous, inasmuch as they contain nothing but a synopsis of the Acts which have been printed above. The lessons of the third Nocturn are drawn from homily 39 of S. John Chrysostom on the Gospel according to Matthew, chap. XI: Jesus answering said: I confess to thee, Father, Lord of heaven: and the same Gospel is read at the Mass, which besides that and the proper Prayer is wholly from the common of abbots.
Annotatamore fitly for the meter: beatis*
MIRACLES AND TRANSLATIONS
From manuscript codices of Remiremont.
Adelphius, abbot of Remiremont, at Luxeuil in the county of Burgundy (S.)
BHL Number: 0075
BY J. P.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
An account of the first translation of the bodies of SS. Romaricus, Amatus, and Adelphius, and of certain benefits which followed it.
The bodies of the three Abbots after about two hundred years Now therefore, by the Lord's leave, we shall narrate that in the times of the most pious and most serene emperor Louis, who was a father of monks and a restorer of holy monasteries, the monastery of the aforesaid father * was renewed and removed to the place in which it now stands. And at that same chief and venerable translation, the bishop a having come with all his clergy, and a throng of peoples being joined to them, when it had come to the opening of the sepulchres of the venerable Confessors of Christ, blessed Amatus and the most glorious Romaricus, and also the most holy Adelphius, the holy bodies were found so unimpaired as though they seemed to have been laid there on that same day: and against the laws of nature the grace of their merits preserved them; that it might be openly shown to all of how great merit these most holy Men were held with the Lord, so that after the courses of two hundred years b their sacred limbs were found unimpaired, like the cedar of Lebanon.
[2] For, at the bishop's bidding, the monuments being dug open, when a certain man of his clergy, uncorrupted, not without prodigies given rather to presumption than to religion, tried to lift the stone laid beneath, he straightway lost his thumb, which was presently restored by the power of the Saints. Then that same bishop, bound with exceeding fear, promised with an oath that none of his men should touch them further; but, inquiring whether anyone of the Saints' own household was performing the office of the clergy, and summoning him to himself, he ordered him to do it. Which command he, receiving it with exceeding fervor, strove to fulfill; saying that he had never experienced * a trembling of such great alarm. A ladder therefore being let down into the pit of the sepulchre, exceedingly trembling and fearful he descended.
[3] Then, bowing his shoulders in honor of the sacred body, as though it were an unbending column c, are raised from the tomb, raising it alone with no one bringing him help, the bishop standing by, he brought forth the heavenly gift and the desirable treasure: which no one doubts was the venerable body of the blessed and excellent confessor of Christ Romaricus. But the sacred pledges also of the kindly man Amatus and of the glorious Adelphius were raised with glory. Then the precious and venerable bodies were washed with wine compounded of divers spices; and, a razor being taken, the beard was shaved off as from a living body, which even now is kept in the same place with due honor.
[4] Being wrapped therefore in precious linens and palls, and set upon carrying-cloths, and by various that one was found in which the body of lord Romaricus was to be carried to be shorter than the most holy body itself. And when the hour had grown late, and the nuns were awaiting at the bank of the river the coming of the Saints, and the bishop wished to hasten this, he ordered a certain presbyter by name Theoderic, and one of the deacons by name Feroinus, to cut the sinews beneath the knees of blessed Romaricus, that so at least he might be able to be laid in the bier. But as they cut, most sacred rosy blood flowed forth as from a living body.
[5] But the deacon, his thumb being cut and his hand swelling exceedingly, prodigies scarcely escaped the peril of death, being struck with repentance. Which therefore happened that it might clearly shine forth how happily he lived with Christ in heaven, through whose holy pledges such notable miracles were laid open on earth. But that unhappy man d who presumed to do this threw away his knife, which could never afterward be found. And he himself remained without food and drink until his death, and, going about day and night around the walls of that monastery and paying the debt of his penalty, he cried out unceasingly: Son of David, have mercy on me. Which word, as we trust, the admirable goodness of the man Romaricus bestowed on him; according to the Apostle e, his body being for the present delivered to Satan, that his spirit might be able to be safe in the day of the Lord; and he breathed out his soul within thirty days.
[6] What miracle on the same journey, in a very small matter, by other the divine power bestowed, we have judged should be set here for the cheer of hearers. While those venerable bodies were being carried through the pleasant places of the fields, a flock of doves, which lord Amatus had been wont to keep for the figure of simplicity and love, and also of the magnificent showing forth in the streams of Jordan f, walking along with those same holy pledges and flying above them, did not depart from them.
[7] prodigies, they are translated beyond the Moselle. Wonderful, so to speak, was this love in animals without reason! While they were being carried through the doors of the store-house to be placed in the church, the aforesaid birds, tamer, as is reported, than the rest, following at once, entered by the same doors through which the bodies of the Saints were brought in, not by flight but on foot; and when the biers were being set down from their shoulders, those same birds, climbing to the roof of the church, remained there, and never afterward returned to the place in which they had been reared. These venerable Confessors of Christ therefore were laid in the place in which they now, by the favor of the grace of their pious Founder, abide g; who indeed were placed separately, two being laid beneath the altar of the blessed and glorious ever-Virgin and Mother of God Mary — namely blessed Amatus and the glorious Romaricus; but the most holy Adelphius was placed beneath the altar of blessed Paul the apostle h.
[8] Benefits obtained after the translation. This translation was made on the seventeenth day of the month of May, which day thenceforth was famous with an anniversary cult: and the divine Goodness made it illustrious with frequent miracles. In a certain year, the feast of this translation being at hand, though a fishing had been commanded, when not even one fish had been caught for some days — for the weather was unfavorable — at length on the vigil of the festival, when the holy Virgins had for the following day nothing prepared for a dish but herbs and pulse, so great a fish was unexpectedly taken in the night that it sufficed for two courses of the meals.
[9] On another day dedicated to the same translation, when only peas and beans with a supply of garden stuff were being prepared for all their food, one of the dependents of S. Peter, beyond hope, brought a single fish of no great size into the monastery. This, when it had been cooked, and was being divided into portions, so increased that it was enough for the whole household for two courses. To which Evangelical miracle i another was added the very same day for full measure; for a little before the evening prayers a stag, coming out of the wood to the bank of the Moselle, offered itself of its own accord for the refreshment of the handmaids of God. Likewise in another year also, on the same solemnity of the translation, a hind coming forth from the neighboring forest onto the causeway, and being entangled and caught by the carts of the servants of the monastery, furnished the holy household with a meal the more agreeable as it was the less expected. k
ANNOTATIONS.
enough is ascribed to the divine goodness; but it could also have happened without a prodigy.
* of S. Romaricus
supply: affirming*
CHAPTER II.
The history of the second translation, and of the miracles which preceded and followed it.
[ ] That the bodies were to be carried into a more honorable place When for many years now the bodies of the Saints had rested, separated, as we have said, in two chapels, on a certain Saturday, about the hour of noon, a taper was found burning in that place in which they were afterward laid together: and, persevering by a new miracle, it did not cease to shine until on the following Sunday an end had been made of the solemnities of Masses. Thus indeed the blessed Confessors began to point out the place of burial they desired, which not long after they indicated far more manifestly. For on a certain night a, to one of the Nuns, now decrepit, who on that same mountain had continually led a praiseworthy life in the service of the same, lord Romaricus stood by in a vision, saying: Go, tell Theodoric, steward of this monastery, that he lay us together undivided; and, showing the place where they were to be laid, he vanished from her eyes.
[11] Then on the following night, appearing again, he enjoined the same things, became known from heaven. and, rebuking her threateningly why she had not fulfilled what he had commanded, he received this answer from her, that she had by no means presumed to intimate these things to that man. On the third night, coming again, he enjoined the same things in repeated speech, and heard the like from her. But lord Romaricus, touching her face with his finger, both commanded her to show this sign and to make known what was being said. But she, taking to her bed, and unable to bear the force of the vision, asked that that man be summoned to her. Looking upon him, and showing him her swollen face, Consider, she said, this sign, and, giving credence to my words, take pains to fulfill hastily what has been enjoined upon thee: for I have suffered these things because I did not presume to intimate to thee what was intimated to me by my Lord. And lest this should perhaps seem incredible to anyone, the flesh dug out by the pressure of his finger and by his nail remained so to her last day.
[12] While a new basilica is built to this end, various workmen Theodoric acquiesced in the divine admonitions, and set about a new plan of the basilica, in which the place destined by God for the pledges of the Saints should occupy, as was fitting, the more honorable part of the church. Further, what things worthy of admiration happened in that building I cannot pass over in silence. A workman of the wall-structure, his foot slipping, fell into a pit dug out for the founding of a column, and at that same moment a huge stone, rolled down from above for a base, overwhelmed the wretched man. He was believed crushed and utterly ground to pieces. They run up, and, the stone being moved with vehement effort, to the astonishment of all he emerges so whole and so lively that he returned at once to the work; for the furthering of which, namely, he understood that he had been preserved.
[13] either falling from a height, When the boss of the vault, of thick stone, was being lifted upward by a hauling crane, there were builders on the topmost planking who were to guide the stone. One of these, straining too vehemently, fell headlong from the planking. In his fall (wonderful to say!) he struck against a wooden prop, and, clinging to it by one hip, hung with his head downward and so remained until, his companions stretching out I know not what supports, he was received safe and unhurt.
[14] On another day, the greatest arch of the church's vaulting being finished, or by a subsidiary arch falling, when the subsidiary arch was being let down by the workmen leaning on the top of the vault, I know not how it slipped from their hands, and, falling from a height, overwhelmed some servants beneath it, dashed to the ground. Without delay others fly up, and, that subsidiary arch being drawn away, they find those whom they thought dead not only alive but also without a wound.
[15] Baddo the presbyter, himself also busy at the stone-work, by a thick stone, when the wall had been brought almost to the top, was setting a fairly thick stone in it: but when this, being applied several times, fitted ill, and he had thrown it down either out of weariness or in eagerness to hasten, the stone by chance struck heavily upon the head of a servant working in a lower place, and lays the man flat on the ground. Others run up, they inquire, they look for the place of the wound, and marvel that he is wholly unhurt.
[16] When Theodoric, syndic of the monastery, was narrating these miracles on the pavement of the basilica to Geimmo b the architect, by a tile, and he could scarcely be brought to give credit; suddenly from the roof, which was then being laid with tile, a tile falling through the middle of the cleft laths made straight for the architect's head. He, when he had turned the blow aside from his head with his hand, and nevertheless, being thrown to the ground, felt himself without a wound, began also to think better of the patronage of the Saints, and of the others preserved by their help.
[17] The roof was being covered which overhung the vestibule of the church; by a whole roof when, by the fury, as is believed, of the evil demon, it suddenly fell as though torn away. The evening prayers were then being chanted by the holy virgins, and the abbess was intoning that verse from the canticle of the most blessed Mother of God: And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. The roofers were cast down headlong with the roof: many also of the workmen were crushed by that ruin: not one of them all was either slain or wounded; not even the wagoner, who was sleeping with his head leaning on the yoke of his own cart, and carried hanging from his belt a little box full of grease for anointing the cart: for, the box being crushed and the grease scattered all about, and the yoke also broken, which served the sleeper for a pillow, he himself was preserved.
[18] There was this also, truly admirable. The aforesaid Theodoric was pressing on the building of a very high wall: and by a very high wall being overwhelmed, and it had now been raised almost to the top, when, Theodoric himself standing by, it suddenly fell and cast down all the builders headlong, and buried one of these with it, crushed under the masonry. Wonderful thing! All escaped the danger, and that man too, being uncovered, came forth wounded in no part of his body.
[19] So many mishaps, so adverse, so unlooked for, every prudent man rightly referred to the envy of the devil: are kept safe and unhurt, and further, how much God's singular providence in averting them increased among all the people the devotion toward the Saints whose cult was concerned, or how great courage it gave to the work and to all the craftsmen for accomplishing the work, can scarcely be told. And so the whole building took not more than one year, and on that very day on which it had been commanded in the vision, it was finished; by divine counsel indeed rather than by that of Theodoric, prefect of the works, who declared that he had not even turned his mind to it, much less intended it.
[20] The bodies solemnly translated into the new basilica, The basilica being completed, it was dedicated with solemn rite under the name and protection of the most blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul. There were translated also into the place prepared, and at the same time laid together (as had been divinely prescribed), the sacred bodies of the blessed confessors Amatus, Romaricus and Adelphius; having first been wrapped in precious cloths and laid in most richly adorned caskets. That translation fell on the fifteenth day of the month of February: but on the day before it was performed, it seemed good to carry those same Patrons about around the monastery in a long train of suppliants, as it were to bind their protection; then, through the whole night with a sacred vigil, to expose them before the doors of the church to the kisses of the pious people upon their feet. During that night certain girls, being lulled in a heavy sleep, when by some heedlessness they had bent their heads upon their feet, were, to the wonder of those present, so supported by the sacred feet as by a well-firm bolster and a solid prop.
[21] are adorned with new miracles. The chapel and altar of the archangel Michael were outside the new basilica, not far from the door; counsel being taken, it was decreed that it should be carried within its enclosure. When this had been done, and the new chapel of S. Michael was being dedicated with a splendid array of sacred ministry and of lights shining on every side, there ran up one of the nuns, brought almost to madness by the force of a most troublesome disease. There, praying with tears, she received whole strength of body and mind. About the same time, at midnight, another of the holy virgins came to pray at that same altar of blessed Michael. While she recites the psalms, and asks pardon for her offenses, suddenly the Paschal taper seemed to her to burn before that altar and to shine far and wide. Amazed at the novelty of the thing, she goes off to one of her companions passing the night in another part of the building, and invites her to the spectacle; but on returning she marvels that the vision has vanished from her eyes.
ANNOTATIONS.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
Miracles wrought in the new basilica of the monastery of Remiremont at the beginning of the X century.
[ ] The author's preface After the true Light of the faithful came forth from the most sacred Virginal womb to save the world, in the nine hundredth year, miracles were first a done in the new monastery, which is hitherto called the Mount of lord Romaricus, and is built in honor of the most glorious Prince of the Apostles, who opens the bars of heaven to the faithful and closes them to the faithless; and also of the venerable confessors of Christ Amatus, Romaricus, Adelphius; who shine forth in virtues, the divine grace supporting them, and unceasingly gleam with miracles, whose most sacred bodies, by the help of divine grace, rest in the aforesaid church. For these are the most glorious and most pious confessors of Christ, namely the most holy Amatus, and our most pious pastor lord Romaricus, and the most blessed Adelphius, through whom the Power of Christ rules this land down to now b.
[23] Wherefore many, delivered by them from calamities and sicknesses, freely confess their wonderful goodness and inexplicable mercy. and the protestation of his faithfulness in this account. Now therefore we shall attempt to describe some part out of so great a number of their powers and miracles, earnestly beseeching studious hearers and readers both to grant us pardon for our defects and our boldness, and not to deny credit to our words, however rude and inelegant. For we call to witness Christ our Lord, to whom all things are manifest, that we have girded ourselves to write neither with any mind of putting forth a falsehood, nor from any opinion of our own sufficiency; but at the exhortation of very many pious minds, lest such powers should be given over to oblivion: and rather that we may satisfy our own zeal and will, than because we trust that we can set forth worthily the notable and admirable deeds of the aforesaid Saints.
[24] In the twelfth and last c year of the reign of the emperor Arnulf, A lamp is kindled from heaven, in the second month, on the fourth day, when the handmaids of God were singing Vespers in the aforesaid oratory
were chanting, unexpectedly a light sent from heaven shone forth, which was also seen to kindle the lamp hanging over the head of holy Romaricus. At which spectacle the holy virgins, wondrously gladdened, poured forth with pious tears into the praises of the undivided Trinity; and, the signal of the bells being given, they called the whole household to that same place. Thus the divine praises and festal thanksgivings were prolonged far into the night. But when a certain one of the nuns, pondering with herself more attentively the novelty of the thing, was somewhat doubtful, and, the nightly prayers of Matins being finished, had remained in the basilica until dawn, with her eyes ever fixed on the lamp divinely kindled, in that very place she beheld with her own eyes a globe of fire gliding down from above; namely that she might no longer hesitate as to the truth of the miracle.
[25] A little child of three years, blind from his first birth, was carried into that same sacred building in his mother's arms with great faith: a blind infant is given sight; and straightway, the use of his eyes being received, with his mother for guide he returned home unharmed on his own feet.
[26] a crippled girl, From the castle of Vesoul d a girl was so bent downward that she could scarcely raise her head a cubit from the ground. And so she could not look at the sky, nor walk, nor even tread the ground with the soles of her feet: but, leaning on two very short props on either side, and touching the ground with the tips of her fingers, she crept rather than walked. She, being brought to the monastery on the very sacred day of the Lord's Ascension, when she had passed there the whole night in great straits, asked to be touched by that candlestick which bore the lamp (which she had learned had been divinely kindled on the eve e of that day). When she had obtained this, and was nonetheless on the following day pressed by the heavy stings of pains, with great groans and tears she begged that she might be carried to the sepulchres of the blessed Confessors of Christ, and then most of all she experienced the help of her pious Patrons: for, the people standing round, the sacristan (whom, having since departed this life, we trust to have passed into heaven), prostrate in prayer, with great faith held out her hand to the sick girl: at which touch, vigor being suddenly poured into her sinews, veins, muscles and her whole withered little body, raised the girl up. She, being fully healed, spent the rest of her life in the ministry of that same church, and was to the faithful who knew of the miracle a ground of great joy and of great praises of God.
[27] a man deprived of the use of his feet A certain man of the congregation of holy Stephen, heavy with age and lame in his feet, and moreover for about eight years feeble in his whole body, came to the monastery by the help of crutches: where, being fully healed by the intercession of the blessed Confessors, he lived the rest of his age in prosperous health.
[28] and another girl deprived of the use of her hands are healed; From a girl of the village of Raon f, now for three whole years and more, palsy had taken away the use of both hands. When she had devoutly gone to that place, she received health, and returned home walking with all joy.
[29] a man with a withered leg and foot is restored to his former vigor; For a certain man from a distant land one leg with its foot had withered, and for that reason he had now for five years been held by a troublesome disease. He had heard by report what miracles were being wrought by the Saints, and, animated by faith, undertook to their tombs a pilgrimage full indeed of toil and pains. Nay, it was becoming worse for him day by day; until, having measured out half the journey, and being still about sixteen leagues distant from the monastery, he began to be relieved of all pain, nay even to run so briskly that through all the rest of the journey he easily outstripped all his companions: which they too afterward confirmed by their testimony.
[30] several others are relieved of various diseases Nor indeed must those things be passed over in silence which in the same year and in the same place happened, wonderful and known to all: namely on the feast of the singular friend of God and prince of the apostles Peter, most celebrated indeed in the whole world, but most delightful to this church especially, dedicated under his name and patronage, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For on that day very many were relieved of various diseases: and when there was a mighty concourse of peoples from every side to the basilica of blessed Peter, that was observed and held for a miracle, that it admitted that multitude of comers which it would not have seemed likely to receive even if it had been three times more capacious.
[31] A boy disabled in all his limbs; On that solemnity, when the holy virgins were chanting the prayers of Matins, a boy of eight years, disabled in all his limbs from his first birth, and wont to be carried in his mother's arms like a corpse, was laid down before the bodies of the Saints. There, the joints of his limbs being at once made firm, and to the great joy and admiration of the bystanders being set upon his feet, he joined himself unharmed to the crowd standing about.
[32] A little girl of seven months had never looked upon the sun: nay, her bloody eyelids were so tightly closed that they could not be opened even by force with fingers applied. a girl is cured of her sight, By the blessing of the oil of S. Amatus, with which she was anointed, she began to enjoy the use of the light. Another blind boy, from the village of Dounoux g, being led into the same basilica with his mother for guide, received his sight the more wonderfully in that, although he accurately discerned and pointed out everything round about, yet no pupils were to be detected in his eyes.
[33] On that very day a woman came into the monastery from her own house quite far distant, and a woman deprived of walking is cured. leaning on crutches; in which calamity she had passed seven whole years. There, being restored, she returned home cheerful with easy step.
[34] A young man possessed was so dreadfully vexed by an evil spirit A possessed man is delivered; that he scarcely lived quiet for an hour. His belly, swelling like a wineskin full of oil, breathed out a most foul stench with frequent panting: besides this, the wretch was again and again now lifted on high, now dashed to the ground: all his inward parts were shaken; which was to the beholders a very great horror and terror. A pilgrimage to the Saints being undertaken, he was free from the molestation of his wicked guest.
[35] To the same monastery there was brought in a wagon a woman others afflicted with other diseases, now for three years so grievously affected that in all that space she tasted neither bread nor any solid food, drawing out her life on milk and honey alone. When she had come thither, she suddenly grew strong, ate bread, and returned home unharmed.
[36] Another woman from Bussang h, for about nine years deprived of the use of her eyes, are restored to health; nine lepers are cleansed. when she had been brought thither, received light as the reward of her faith and devotion. A boy of five years, with both feet as it were dead, had never walked. His mother brought him into the church: and, three nights being there passed in prayer, at last on that same sacred day of the prince of the apostles the boy began to walk freely on his own feet, with none helping him. On that very day nine lepers were cleansed in the same church.
[37] In the same year, on the third day of the month of October, a lamp set as usual before the reliquary of the most pious holy Adelphius [A lamp before the relics of S. Adelphius is kindled, and flashes of light and sweet odors] divinely took flame. Now let us proceed to the narration of those wonders which happened in the same hall and house of God on the next following feast of the Lord's Epiphany: and first on the vigil of the Epiphany; on which day, when the morning twilight was scarcely yet glimmering, an unwonted light was seen to shine at the altar of the Virgin Mary Mother of God, and so great a sweetness of odor began to be breathed forth that all the bystanders, wonderfully refreshed, could not even restrain their tears for joy, and recognized the presence of the Mother of Mercy, who poured forth upon the world the splendor of the eternal Light. The same brightness was seen in the same place on the three following nights; the very sisters devoutly affirming it, who, to win credit for the miracle, had been ordered to keep watch two by two on each night: and on the following day at midday the same divine splendor, the same odor was sent; by that counsel of God, if I mistake not, that this thing done above nature might be confirmed by the testimony of very many.
[38] are sent from heaven into the same church. On the very sacred day therefore of the Epiphany of our Lord, on which a star shining from heaven led the first-fruits of the gentiles to Christ's cradle; on which water turned into wine gladdened the guests; on which finally, by the touch of Christ's most sacred body, all waters were sanctified for the salvation of the faithful; it pleased the most sacred Mother of God to make that same place illustrious with a new miracle. For before the altar consecrated to the divine Virgin, at which a numerous people is wont to fall down in supplication for the sake of prayer, a globe of fire of a scarlet color was seen to glide down from heaven: from which globe a mighty light shone forth, spread all around, and the wick of a lamp also was kindled by a spark struck out from it, and the minds of all the bystanders were flooded with unwonted joy. Oh with how great gladness do the holy Confessors of Christ exult in heaven, while they unceasingly praise him whom the most blessed Virgin Mary bore in her sacred womb! For she is the Lady and Queen of the heavens, and she willed thus to manifest herself, to the praise and glory of the aforesaid holy Confessors, and that she might give hope to wretched sinners of taking refuge with her; and these miracles ought to please us the more, the more certainly by them we learn that she is mindful of us.
ANNOTATIONS.
the appendix at num. 36. Thirdly and finally it could be said that it is not so certain that Arnulf died in the year 899 that we must necessarily have recourse to one or the other of the means already assigned. For the editions of Regino, which you have enumerated in the Benedictine writers of the Literary History, vol. 6, p. 151, Labbe affirms in his Dissertation on ecclesiastical writers to have been printed most faultily, and conjectures that two or three years were compacted into one. And Martène in the second Itinerary, p. 274: We saw there (in the abbey of Prüm) a chronicle of Regino differing in several places from the printed ones. Certainly not even in this place, on which they chiefly rest, do the writers agree with Regino in all things. Thus Pagi in the Critica at the year 899 thinks it truer that Arnulf was buried in the church of S. Emmeram, as the Fulda continuator of Freher hands down, than at Ötting, as Regino has it. Thus Johann von Eckhart, vol. 2 of Eastern Francia, p. 786, against Regino, who places Arnulf's last day on the third of the Kalends of December, lays down the VI of the Ides of December with Hermann Contractus and a leaden tablet found in Arnulf's sarcophagus in the year 1671, which has thus: ✠ VI Idus Decr Arnolt ip obiit. Finally, not to be longer than is fair in a matter which I did not propose to determine, the continuator of the Annals of Fulda just praised attaches Arnulf's death to the year 900, and a twofold short Chronicle of the monastery of S. Gall in Du Chesne, vol. 3 of the Writers of Gaul, pp. 466 and 471, marks the same, in this manner: DCCCC. The emperor Arnolf died.
CHAPTER II.
An account of the third translation, and of several miracles.
[ ] The nuns, fleeing with the relics on account of the Hungarians pressing in, The Hungarians [a] breaking in, a cruel and savage nation, and ranging over Lorraine with savage devastation, the holy virgins found it needful to flee to their own Castle, that they might set themselves and the relics of their Saints in safety. Of these a certain one, when she had halted before the steps of the altar, beheld three hands, which, stretched out over the very reliquaries of the blessed Confessors, showed the way. By others also there was caught with their ears at the same sepulchres a light murmur and noise, as of men who, turning this way and that, exchanged talk among themselves.
[40] But when the venerable bodies were being carried to the Castle, prodigiously cross the Moselle: the Moselle had of necessity to be crossed, which was then, swollen with rain-waters, overflowing far beyond its channel. Therefore those who carried about lighted waxen torches, having fallen into the waters with their torches, wondered that not even these were extinguished. Some nuns also of the company of Remiremont, plunged into the waters by the barbarians, emerged unhurt by the help of their holy Patrons: and this was wonderful, that, whereas the enemies' horses were wrapped in the waters up to the neck, yet those same waters scarcely reached to the knees of the throng that ministered to the sacred relics.
[41] things being at peace they return, When that storm had passed over, the holy virgins began to think of returning; there had been found on the holy Mount the precious body of blessed Gebetrudis the virgin. They resolved to add that gem to their treasure. And so on one and the same day, the twentieth of the month of August, both the bodies of the three holy Abbots were carried back to their former seats, and the body of holy Gebetrudis was first brought into the same basilica.
[42] and the sacred bodies, Through those tumults, since all the supports of life whatsoever that were in store lay open to plunder, all the gold and silver of the sacred biers had to be spent upon things necessary for the sustaining of the life of the household of Remiremont. Meanwhile, how highly the divine Goodness esteemed its Servants in heaven it bore witness by frequent miracles: moved by which very many pious and religious men set about repairing those same sacred cases at their own expense, and restoring them to their former adornment. And how pleasing to God this zeal and service was, very many admirable events proved, of which we have judged it worth the labor to review some.
[43] being made illustrious by new prodigies, When the work was being pressed on, and there had already been weighed out to the smiths as much silver as was thought necessary for accomplishing the thing, a pleasant miracle happened which I cannot pass over in silence. The silver being purified and the dross cast out, and it being weighed again, it was found (as commonly happens) to have fallen far short of its former weight. Without delay that mass is carried to the treasury, that it might be recognized how much had been lost. It is examined on the balance. Wonderful thing! It is observed even to exceed its former weight. And when some could scarcely believe this, and said that perhaps those scales were not fair enough, another balance is applied, and thus credit is established for the miracle. But afterward too, in the course of the work, that same mass of silver was noted to have increased divinely by the weight of ten shillings [b]. That kindness of God gave wonderfully great courage to those laboring for the cult of the Saints.
[44] The adornment of the cases being completed, thought began to be taken of restoring the place they set them back in their former place with great solemnity; where they should be laid. This being prepared, one of the smiths, measuring the sacred biers with an ell, found that one of them, which was the largest of all, was two fingers longer than the very space of the place. This being proved to the eyes of all the bystanders, and, lest the measure should deceive, the length was marked with an awl fixed into a rod. Then indeed the bier was cut back to the measure with a saw, lest by a greater noise the chant of the holy virgins should be disturbed. But the same rod being applied again (wonderful to say!) the sacred body seemed suddenly to have grown, so much so that it exceeded not only the measure but even the very end of the bier that had been taken off with the saw. That thing, so unwonted, was alike a cause of amazement and of terror. And so, the workmen losing heart, the business was broken off. And I do not know whether by that prodigy God meant to signify that it would be more pleasing to him if the pomp of that translation should adorn the approaching feast day of blessed Romaricus. For on that day, amid the solemnities of Masses, the Godhead being invoked, when the priests, clothed with sacred vesture, yet with feet bare out of reverence, attempted to lay the bodies of the Saints in their places, they carried this out easily and conveniently. Now let us follow out the rest.
[45] For one of the smiths who had cut back that too-long bier with the saw, where these things by miracles the right hand from that time was hindered by a heavy pain. He, being anointed with the oil of the Saints, grew well in a moment. When preparation was being made for translating the relics, it was needful to light a candle; when someone turned himself to that end, suddenly of itself the candle took flame in his hand. About the same time a matron grievously afflicted, as soon as she touched the sacred reliquaries, was on the instant fully healed.
[46] Very many other miracles God wrought there; continue to shine. of which we shall commemorate some in turn. A certain man, held by a grievous disease, ordered himself to be placed on a cart and carried to the sepulchres of the Saints. There he passed one night in prayer: and when he was returning home in the same cart, marveling in the middle of the way that he was suddenly restored to soundness, he leapt down from the cart, and himself began to drive the cart. Two women, mother and daughter, their eyes being overspread with cataract, could scarcely discern any glimmer of light shining through. Being anointed with the oil of the Saints, they gained clear sight.
[47] In this monastery there is a new chapel called after the holy Savior, in which a hanging lamp was very often kindled from heaven. More notable was this kind of miracle on the sixth feria of holy Week, on which day, since all lights are wont to be extinguished in the churches, the lamp, being seen to take fire of itself and without a mortal hand, was a cause at once of great joy and of admiration. The same also happened on the two following days, namely on holy Saturday, and on the Sunday of the resurrection both in the morning and in the evening, before the bodies of the Saints; and often at other times too, when the sacristans were either slower in lighting the lamps or quicker in extinguishing them; the whole people being astounded with amazement at miracles so frequent.
[48] From the household of holy Stephen a youth of sixteen years, A sick man regains health, grievously wounded by the craft of the ancient serpent, was carried with mighty toil on his poor mother's shoulders to the memorials of the Saints. There, prayers being poured forth, being granted the soundness he desired, he departed with thanks given: and the grateful mother added a vow that, as long as she lived, she would once every year devoutly come to that same place for the cult and service of the Saints.
[49] and a blind woman recovers her sight. A pious matron also, a native of the place, who had long remained blind, being brought into the church, passed the night in prayer: and when toward dawn, despairing of health, she was thinking of returning home, she first approached the sacred biers as though to bid them farewell. Opportunely: for, her sight being at once received, she had cause to pour herself forth into new praises and thanksgivings.
[50] The cloth of the reliquaries is not harmed by fire, That too must be noted, that as often as torches or lamps were extinguished about the sacred relics, no stench was ever wont to be breathed forth thence, but rather a certain unwonted sweetness of odor. It happened also, when incense was being burned as usual by a nun, that through heedlessness
burning coals shaken out of the censer fell upon the covering of the reliquaries, made of a precious purple cloth woven with golden bands. She, amazed, began silently to call upon blessed Romaricus: and not in vain; for straightway the coals were extinguished, just as if they had been thrown into water, and on the cloth not even the slightest trace of burning appeared.
[51] feverish persons One of the holy virgins of the divine Romaricus was so ill with fevers that for weakness of strength she could scarcely stand upright. Being advised to suffer herself to be led to the relics of the Saints, when she had prayed there on bended knees and holding a waxen taper in her hand, she departed free from every ailment and plainly whole. The same woman, having at another time endured most bitter pains of the teeth, was relieved by the help of those heavenly Physicians.
[52] are healed; When also the emperor Lothair [c] was piously visiting the monastery of S. Romaricus, he had with him one of his chief nobles, long since tossed by most troublesome fevers, and by now given up by all the physicians of the kingdom. The abbess therefore being summoned, the emperor said: Dost thou think, pious mother, that any comfort can be brought to this man so grievously afflicted? When she had answered that nothing was to be despaired of concerning God's goodness and power, he ordered the sick man to be carried to the bodies of the Saints. As soon as he came thither, the disease being suddenly driven off, he received his whole strength; and thence without support he betook himself to his lodging, and afterward departed briskly in the emperor's retinue.
[53] a lamp burns and a bell is rung of itself; a sweet odor is perceived; Three days before the festival of the most blessed Virgin Mother of God assumed into heaven, about two hours after midday, before the altar of S. Andrew a lamp was kindled by divine power. But on the very day of the Virgin's assumption, before the image of the same most sacred Mother of God, painted on the wall in the chapel of holy Michael, a taper took flame from heaven: and then the sound of a little bell, heard with no mortal ringing it, increased the wonder. On that same day toward evening, when Compline was being sung at the altar of the most august Virgin, a fragrance breathing forth from that altar of most sweet odor flooded the senses and minds of all with wonderful delight. In the same year, in the oratory of the holy Savior, on the very day of the Lord's Nativity, before the altar of S. Martin, where the embassy of the archangel Gabriel to the shepherds about the birth of Christ is set forth in colors, a lamp unexpectedly, as often at other times, began to burn.
[54] a blind man is given sight; In the third year after the plundering by the pagans, we could not be silent about a miracle which was done there d. A certain man from the parts of Alamannia, blind from birth, by name Fredebert, saw in a vision that, going into the parts of the Vosges, he should seek the monastery which is called the Mount of the kindly Romaricus, and there receive his sight. He, rising with his wife and two sons, came to the aforesaid place, and, staying there two days, on the third day (which is called the day of the resurrection), while he stood before the steps of the altar, by the pitying clemency of the Savior (as we learned from his own report) a dove sent from heaven flying about his eyes, straightway blood flowed forth, and he received his sight. And when it had been announced to the abbess, she, coming with the nuns, began to inquire into miracles so amazing, which had been divinely wrought about him. But he, still persisting in the same straits and uttering voices of groaning, the people standing by, brought forth the saying of the blind man enlightened by the Savior: I see men as it were trees walking e. And lest this should perhaps seem incredible to anyone, we set the testimony not in the mouth of one, but of almost all who were then present; and we bring forward not things heard, but things seen, under divine attestation.
[55] Nor let this pass unnoted among the other wonderful signs those who unjustly seized the convent's goods which were done in the reign of king Charles f: how almighty God, by the admonitions of the most pious and most glorious Romaricus, restored the vineyards of the church unjustly taken away by Walo, son of Manasses. And so from the villa of Miliciacum g the servants of holy Peter come, and made known that the said vineyards had been taken away. Compelled by this necessity, both the abbess and the whole congregation, counsel being taken, chose, contrary to the custom of the place, some of the nuns who feared God, and sent them to prince Richard h, beseeching that he would order the things taken away to be restored. Coming * therefore to the aforesaid prince, straightway, by the bounty of the heavenly Clemency, he ordered the said goods to be restored. Which answer being received, the handmaids of God, entering, ordered the vineyard to be harvested, and stored it in a cellar beside the church.
[56] Hearing this, the faithless Walo, moved with indignation, sent one of his soldiers, are divinely punished. by name Pantho, to fetch the wine for him. And as he came with threats, eager to receive it , one of the handmaids of God, holding in her hand the shoe of blessed Romaricus together with the key, and confidently raising it against him, said: Take this key which thou seekest, to the heaping up of thy damnation. He, going back, fell, and, uttering most hideous cries, grievously vexed by the devil, expired. And the oxen which had come to carry the wine, climbing on the roofs, gave out the bellowing of a dreadful voice. Seeing this, the handmaids of God, and all the throng of the faithful who had come together for the spectacle, rejoicing and praising the Lord, returned to their own homes. And the aforesaid Walo within the circuit of a year wretchedly ended his life. And these things were done on the seventh of the Ides of December, the vigil of blessed Romaricus, our most glorious patron, governor and protector.
ANNOTATIONS.
to those coming*
to whom as he came*
eager*