Reverentius

ON ST. REVERENTIUS, PRIEST AND CONFESSOR,

AT BAYEUX IN LOWER NORMANDY,

Perhaps in the fourth or fifth century.

A HISTORICAL COLLECTION.

Of his cultus, Acts, and translations.

Reverentius, priest and confessor, at Bayeux in Lower Normandy (St.)

BHL Number: 7199

BY C. S.

This saint, unknown to the more ancient martyrologists, is announced by some more recent ones at the present day at Bayeux, which — situated in Lower Normandy of Gaul on the river Aure, about two miles from the shore of the British sea — Some announce the saint is an episcopal city under the metropolis of Rouen, called by the inhabitants Bayeux. Among these Greven, in the Usuardine supplements in Sollier, speaks thus: In Normandy, in the city of Bayeux, of blessed Reverentius, priest and confessor. Molanus in the same place: On the same day at Bayeux, of blessed Reverentius, priest and confessor. The same place likewise is assigned by Ferrari in the General Catalogue, following Molanus, and by Canisius in the German Martyrology; but both address him with the title of Saint.

[2] The same is done by Saussay in the Supplement of the Gallican Martyrology, at Bayeux, where, however, making two out of one, as we shall presently see, he adorns St. Reverentius with the following eulogy: At Bayeux, the birthday of St. Reverentius, priest and confessor, who, a disciple of St. Exuperius, the apostle of that city, being enlightened by him with the light of the faith and washed in the saving font, received his spirit (as Timothy long ago received Paul's) by the sacred imposition of hands. Aiding him thereby in the ministry of salvation, and preaching at Bayeux the faith and glory of Christ, he begot innumerable souls by the heavenly seed unto blessed eternity. And when by sending his staff he had healed a paralytic, and had wrought very many other marvelous signs of the divine power with which he was full, a candidate of glorious immortality, he passed to the tabernacles on high. Whence Saussay learned these things we shall say below.

[3] But the Paris Martyrology announces the same man at Nucastrum, in French Noatre, others announce him at Nucastrum: thus: At Nucastrum in the territory of Tours, of St. Reverentius the priest. Castellanus agrees, in the Universal Martyrology at the same day, where he also writes thus of his sacred relics: At Nucastrum in Touraine, of St. Reverentius the priest, a native of Bayeux. His relics were honored for several centuries in the Poitiers (monastery) of St. Radegund, and afterward in the Angers (convent) of St. John. Some portion of them also is kept in the abbey of Gif (of virgins of the Order of St. Benedict), in the diocese of Paris. The first doubtless assign Bayeux because in the Acts to be examined below the saint is said to have lived and been buried there, and it is established that he is venerated there. But the others seem to announce him at Nucastrum because his body once rested in that place, as will appear from what is to be said, and perhaps even today he has cultus there likewise. I have judged that Bayeux should be retained, because his cultus in that city is established for me, and he is reported to have lived and died there.

[4] Saussay, praised above, celebrates on this day also a certain St. Reverentianus, a monk in the monastery of Angeliacum. Saussay wrongly doubled him: At the monastery of St. John the Baptist of Angeliacum or Angeriacum, he says, under the see of Saintes, the feast of St. Reverentianus, a monk, a man of divine virtues and adorned with the gifts of the sevenfold grace; whose body, gleaming with miracles, in the same convent, where it lay buried with honor, the Calvinist saint-fighters impiously and savagely tore away. But by this outrage they made the memory of the holy confessor, which they thought to abolish, more famous and venerable; which on that day, on which the blessed man passed to the Lord in the sleep of a peaceful death, remains conspicuous there, with an anniversary cultus under the rite of a double Office. So he, subjoining then concerning St. Reverentius what we have related at no. 1. But to me there is no doubt that out of St. Reverentius he fabricated Reverentianus, and thus out of one man two, the one a priest, the other a monk. The reason is that it is established that the body of St. Reverentius the priest was translated to the aforesaid monastery in the tenth century; and since Saussay was ignorant of this, he believed that the saint who was venerated there was distinct from Reverentius the priest, and out of his own conjectures called the unknown monk Reverentianus.

[5] his cultus at Bayeux Hermant in the History of the diocese of Bayeux, part 1, chapter 4, writes that our saint is honored at Bayeux at this day, the twelfth of September, with an annual feast; but that this is not to be understood of a feast which is celebrated by the people with cessation from servile work I gather from a certain Proper of that place, in which at the said day the Office of St. Reverentius, priest and confessor, is prescribed to be recited under a semi-double rite indeed, but of three lessons only — whereas it would surely have to be prescribed with a greater rite if on that day the people also had to keep holiday. Whether, however, a greater feast was afterward introduced there, I do not know — any more than the year in which the mentioned Breviary, which is mutilated, was printed. Of the lessons the third alone is proper, all the rest being taken from the common of a confessor not a pontiff. And the lesson is of this sort: Reverentius, having received baptism from blessed Exuperius, burning with divine charity, preached Christ at Bayeux and converted many to the faith. Endowed with great sanctity and famous for miracles, he was raised to the priestly Order by the same Exuperius. A paralytic, when he had received the staff of Reverentius sent to him, was made whole. He died on the day before the Ides of September.

[6] and elsewhere. In Angeriacum too, a town and Benedictine monastery of the diocese of Saintes, his cultus was formerly famous, because of his body having been brought thither and long preserved, as we shall see below. Nay, that he had a church dedicated to his name there we gather from the writers of the Gallia Christiana, tom. 2, col. [ ], where a Bull of Pope Clement V is mentioned, by which he united to the monastery of Angeriacum the churches of St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Reverentius, situated in the village of Angeriac. Moreover in the Breviary of Tours of the year 1635 at the same day he is honored with an annual commemoration from the common of a confessor not a pontiff. But when Hermant, cited above, says that St. Reverentius is celebrated with a proper Office as a martyr in the monastery of St. Radegund, where we shall say that his sacred body rested for some time, either that is another Reverentius, or he is wrongly venerated as a martyr; for I have nowhere found him endowed with the laurel of martyrdom. For the rest, the writers of the Gallia Christiana note that the monastery or basilica of St. Radegund passed to canons already from the ninth century, col. [ ].

[7] Of his Acts we have three manuscript copies, of which one is noted as transcribed from a very ancient manuscript codex of M. de la Mare, Acts of no credit, the second from a Vendôme manuscript, the third from a manuscript of Rouge-Cloître on paper, in quarto. The first two agree in everything, but so manifestly savor of fable that I judge them unworthy of the press; for the same reason I shall not give the third either, because, although it does not bring forth fables, it is nevertheless only a brief summary of the former, put together more than once in the very same phrases. But lest I should seem to have asserted these things gratuitously, it will be well to have shown why I so judge. The author, who is anonymous, thus begins: After the passion and glorious ascension of the Lord into the heavens, and after the passing of the holy Apostles to the country of happiness, there was a man of venerable life, by name Exuperius, whom the Lord destined for the city of Bayeux to preach to the nations, and appointed first bishop in that very place.

[8] By this bishop he says St. Reverentius was instructed and baptized as a youth. and unworthy of the press; But St. Exuperius, beholding in him (Reverentius) a prudent understanding, established in all good works, before he was fifteen years old baptized him in the name of the holy Trinity, and himself received him from the sacred font, and was to him a spiritual father. The time at which he would have these things done he hints below, when he brings in the saint, already washed in the saving font, speaking with a certain blind man these words, among others, concerning Christ: Rising from the dead on the third day, he ascended to the heavens; but before he ascended he enlightened the hearts of the faithful, cleansed lepers, and bade me a sinner be born. According to these things therefore the saint would have been born, or at least conceived, before the ascension of Christ the Lord into the heavens; and if that is so, how then could he, before he was fifteen years old, be baptized by St. Exuperius, whom the same writer had written to have first come to Bayeux after the passing of the holy Apostles to the country of happiness? All these things, of course, savor of a biographer by no means contemporary, and more than fairly fond of his native episcopate.

[9] He says that by the same St. Exuperius Reverentius was ordained first Doorkeeper and Exorcist, and that they are such; and then priest, and exhibits him as working many miracles, and among these some which either were taken over from this Life into the fabulous Acts of St. Ragnobert, bishop of Bayeux, rejected by our Papebroch, tom. 3 of May, at the sixteenth day, p. 618 and following, or from those into this. For there Papebroch says of St. Ragnobert, among other things: That while still a Doorkeeper he is said to have freed seven possessed persons from unclean spirits, the name of him being invoked who commanded those spirits to go out of Mary Magdalene; and that, returning from the village of Brives after being consecrated bishop, he healed a paralytic by sending his staff; and that at his first entrance into the city of Bayeux he healed a woman laboring with a flux of blood, and many sick and possessed persons — this I judge is not to be made much of. And things very like these are narrated in this Life concerning St. Reverentius. For first, while still a Doorkeeper and Exorcist, he is likewise narrated to have freed seven possessed persons in the name of Christ, who commanded the unclean spirits to go out of Mary Magdalene. Then, having been consecrated priest, likewise by sending

his staff, he is reported to have healed a paralytic and a woman laboring with a flux of blood by praying well, as also many other sick and possessed persons.

[10] is shown. From the same Acts Papebroch had premised in the same place, at no. 5, that St. Ragnobert had built on Mount Phas, one mile from the city, where the people refused to receive the Gospel, an oratory of St. John; the same thing is again narrated of St. Reverentius in our Acts. Finally our biographer, weaving a long speech which he says the saint used before his disciples when near to death, attributes to him among other things these words: I ask you, most high God, that if a man placed in any straitness or peril shall have entreated your mercy through me your servant, you may deign to free him from whatsoever necessity he shall have cried to you: whether he be on the sea, or on land, or on a journey, or in infirmity of body, or in whatsoever straitness; hear and help and free him, that all may know that you are the God of the ages, and that I, Reverentius, your servant, may be able to obtain for them from your mercy what they shall have justly asked. Hear, O Lord, all Christians, whosoever shall come on the day of my passing out of this world, and shall have ceased from every servile work, and shall have rendered their offerings and vows to you, O Lord: let no sword come upon them, nor any persecution, nor famine, nor barrenness of the earth, nor any disturbance, etc. Who would not here recognize a trifler? I certainly judge that St. Reverentius was more a lover of humility than that, being anxious about his own cultus, he should pray in such a fashion.

[11] His date uncertain; he seems to have been a priest: Of the age in which the saint lived we have nothing from any source other than the Acts mentioned, and therefore we can establish nothing certain about it. If, however, as they report, he was a disciple of St. Exuperius, the first bishop of Bayeux, he will have to be referred not to the first century, but to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth, as Papebroch showed in St. Ragnobert at the place cited above, and as after him Sollier observed at the 1st of August in St. Exuperius. The dignity of priest all the martyrologists who have mentioned him attribute to him; but in the documents of the church of Saintes, published in tom. 2 of the Gallia Christiana, he is named only with the title of holy confessor. John Bouchet in the Annals of Aquitaine, part 3, chapter 1, at the year 940 believed him an abbot, when among the sacred bodies which he thought to be in the abbey of St. Cyprian at Poitiers he reckoned that of St. Reverentius (Reverend), abbot and confessor; which title indeed I have read given him by no one else. Yet I should not dare to take from him the dignity of priest.

[12] Of the day of his death and his burial it is thus read in the same Acts: the day of his death and his burial. Full of days he happily died on the day before the Ides of September. The bishop of that city most excellently laid \ his body in the basilica which St. Exuperius, their master and spiritual father, had built long before. Afterward, an angel speaking through a vision, it seemed good to the bishop of that city to translate the body of blessed Reverentius to a more lofty place. And so, all the clergy and people being called together, with hymns and praises they translated the body of blessed Reverentius, and carried it to the place which is called Cerificatus, on the very day of the fourteenth of the Kalends of May, where the Lord afterward wrought many wonders through him, which it would be long to enumerate.* Whence the biographer learned these things I do not know; but with me they are of no weight, both for the reasons said above and because of his manner of writing, which shows that he was very far removed from the saint's age.

[13] Of the twofold translation of the sacred body we have more certain information from the Chronicle of St. Maixent, The twofold translation of the body otherwise called of Maillezais, in Labbe, tom. 2 of the Manuscript Library, where at the year of Christ 944 I read these things to our purpose: At the same time the venerable Aimo, abbot of the monastery of St. John the Baptist and of St. Cyprian, which is situated in view of the city (of Poitiers), with Rainald a monk, his intimate, translated the body of St. Reverentius from the castle of Noiastrum to Poitiers \, into the monastery of St. Radegund. And to this Aimo, Rainald himself succeeded in the abbacy, and afterward translated the same saint, with the counsel of William, duke of the Aquitanians, into the aforesaid monastery of St. John the Baptist at Angeriacum — which convent the duke himself greatly loved and had enriched with great honors.*

[14] The castle which is here called Noiatrum we have seen at no. 3 called Nucastrum, in French Noatre, and situated in the territory of Tours; made in the tenth century. but on what occasion, or in what century, the saint's body was translated thither, I have read handed down by no one. William, of whom mention is made in the praised Chronicle, was duke of the Aquitanians and count of the Poitevins, surnamed Tow-head, who restored the Benedictine monastery of St. John the Baptist of Angeriacum or Engeriacum, or as it is also otherwise called Angeliacum, on the river Boutonne in the diocese of Saintes — formerly overthrown by the Normans — Martin being summoned from the convent of St. Cyprian at Poitiers together with monks to dwell in it, as may be seen in Mabillon, tom. 3 of the Annals, at the year of Christ 940, no. 10, and in tom. 2 of the reissued Gallia Christiana, col. [ ]. To Martin succeeded Aimo, by whom the first of the mentioned translations, from Noiastrum to the then monastery of St. Radegund at Poitiers, was carried out. In what year the second translation, from St. Radegund's to the monastery of St. John the Baptist, was made by Rainald, the successor of Aimo, is uncertain.

[15] From these things gather that Hermant erred when in the History of Bayeux praised above he wrote Hermant's error is corrected. that the relics of St. Reverentius were laid up by William surnamed Long-sword, duke of Normandy, in the monastery of St. Cyprian at Poitiers about the year 934, and that the chief part of them was thence translated in the year 944 by Aimo to the convent of St. Radegund, where in his own time also it was honored. He has indeed for the first translation as his authority John Bouchet, part 3 of the Annals of Aquitaine, chapter 1, at the year 940, where, as we have seen above, among the sacred relics of that place he reckons the body of St. Reverentius (saint Reverend), abbot and confessor, a native of Bayeux in Normandy; but he affirms that it was translated thither not by William Long-sword, but by the said counts of Poitiers, among whom he had numbered William Tow-head; which nevertheless from what has been said appears also false, as does the title of abbot, which we think by no means suits him. For the rest, in tom. 2 of the Gallia Christiana, among the documents of the church of Saintes, some are reckoned which pertain to Angeriacum, in which mention is made of St. Reverentius honored there; and in one indeed, which is ascribed to Pope John XIX, and in another, which is ascribed to William duke of the Aquitanians, it is affirmed that his body is kept in that place.

[16] The body is said to have been scattered by the Calvinists; What further became of that sacred body — whether it was afterward translated elsewhere, or perished by some mishap — we do not know. Certainly Bucelinus does not reckon it among the bodies of saints enclosed in various monasteries of his Order; and the writers of the praised Gallia Christiana note, col. [ ], that the monastery of Angeriacum was overthrown by the English in the year 1346, and, col. [ ], that its church was devastated in the year 1562, in the month of June, by the raging Calvinists, under John Chabot the abbot, who was infected with the same heresy; whence there arises a grave suspicion that that sacred treasure, if it survived at Angeriacum until that time, perished in that disaster. Nay, that this really happened Saussay writes, reported at no. 3, although he said Reverentianus the monk instead of St. Reverentius.

[17] some of his relics, however, kept elsewhere. Yet it must not be said that the body was so entire at Angeriacum that some portions of it were not honored elsewhere too; for, as I said at no. 3, some portion is venerated in the abbey of virgins of Gif in the diocese of Paris, on the testimony of Castellanus. That some are also kept in the church of St. Radegund is likely from Hermant, of whom at no. 11; for although we cannot admit that the saint's body, translated thither by Aimo, remained there until Hermant's times, yet we cannot deny that some portion of it is exposed there to public veneration, especially since he expressly adds that his arm is wont to be carried about in the solemn procession. Nevertheless, since he adds that that holy Reverentius is honored there as a martyr of Jesus Christ, I have a grave suspicion that the body of some unknown martyr, afterward distinguished by that name, is kept in that place. Finally, that Bayeux enjoyed some relics of the saint before the sacrilegious rage of the Calvinists scattered the sacred remains in that city, and besides his staff, with which the saint while he lived is said to have healed a paralytic, adorned with precious gems — for this the same Hermant is the authority. But whether that staff is to be attributed to St. Reverentius or to St. Ragnobert the bishop, who shall say? See what was said at no. 8.

\ condidit* (laid up)

\ Pictavos* (to Poitiers)