ON ST. LIDORIUS OR LITORIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT TOURS IN GAUL.
About the year 370.
A COLLECTION.
Of the saint's cultus and deeds.
Lidorius or Litorius, bishop and confessor, at Tours in Gaul (St.)
BY J. S.
The memory of St. Lidorius or Litorius is so celebrated in the ancient Hieronymian martyrologies that I greatly wonder The saint's name famous in the Hieronymian calendars, that Baillet could say, in the Life of St. Lidorius, that this saint is not commemorated in the ancient martyrologies, as he is not commemorated in today's Roman. For the saint's name is known in almost all the Hieronymian ones, but written in different ways. But whether the name be expressed as Lidorius, or Litorius, or Litorus, or also with other neighboring letters, everywhere the same saint is designated. In Florentinius, in the text, he is thus announced: In Gaul, in the city of Tours, the deposition of St. Litorius the bishop. The Corbie codex has: In the city of Tours, the deposition of St. Lidorius the bishop. The Epternach: In the Gauls, in the city of Tours, the deposition of Litorius the bishop. The Augsburg Martyrology among us: At Tours, of Lidorius the bishop. The Labbean: At Tours, of Ledorus. The Gellone in d'Achery: At Tours, of Lidorus. In Martène, tom. 3 of the Anecdota, the same words are in the first, col. [ ]; and in the same place, in the Tours one: At Tours, of Lidorius the bishop; and in the Calendar of the monastery of Lyre: Of St. Lector, confessor. In the same author, tom. 6 of the Amplissima Collectio, col. 675, the Calendar of Stavelot: The deposition of St. Lidorius the bishop. The Verdun: Of Lidorius the bishop. There is added Rabanus, announcing the saint alone today in these words: In Gaul, in the city of Tours, the deposition of Lidorius the bishop. These things suffice, that no one may think St. Lidorius was unknown to the ancient martyrologies — although he is passed over by Usuard, Ado, Bede, and most others of the middle age.
[2] In the supplements of Bede and Usuard the memory of St. Lidorius is most frequent, and among the more recent martyrologists: but with the name from time to time somewhat dislocated, as happens in the martyrologies just given. He is found also in the Appendix of Ado, and in most of the more recent writers. Saussay adorned the saint with a fitting eulogy. The author of the manuscript Florarium commends him with these words: At Tours, of St. Lidorius, bishop and confessor. This holy man showed the way of salvation to all who erred; confounding heresies, he publicly preached God threefold in Persons and one in essence. And thus he proved dear to all, and deserved to obtain the life which he sought, in the year of Salvation 470. But this reckoning strays by nearly a whole century, unless this happened by the fault of a copyist. Ghini too is far removed from the true chronology, when he says the saint died in the year of the Lord, perhaps
342. Certainly Castellanus and the author of the Paris Martyrology come nearer to the year of his death, who note the year 371. The last announces St. Lidorius thus: At Tours, of St. Lidorius the bishop, who, given as successor to blessed Gatianus after thirty-seven years, and predecessor of St. Martin, first built a church within the walls of the city, when there were already Christians there.
[3] his cultus most ancient, The cultus of St. Lidorius is most ancient, and was already in the fifth century most famous in the church of Tours. For St. Perpetuus, who after the middle of the fifth century began to preside over the church of Tours, in his ordinance concerning fasts and vigils in St. Gregory of Tours, book 10, chapter 31, prescribed vigils also on the birthday of St. Litorius, at his basilica. Therefore the feast of St. Lidorius was at that time among the chief ones of the church of Tours, and the saint had a basilica of his own name, as St. Martin also had. Nay, already in the time of St. Martin that church seems to have had the name of St. Lidorius; for St. Gregory in the same place at no. 3, concerning the body of St. Gatianus, first prelate of Tours, translated by St. Martin, speaks thus: He translated the body of blessed Gatianus, and buried it beside the sepulcher of St. Litorius, in that aforesaid basilica of his (that is, Litorius') name. I confess that the church could be so called because it had been built by St. Lidorius. But neither is it at all to be wondered at if it already then had his name as a saint's. Certainly Briccius built a church for St. Martin, whom he had succeeded; and St. Briccius himself too was venerated with a famous feast in the time of St. Perpetuus, who, after the intervening Eustochius, was the successor of Briccius. As concerns the cultus of the later centuries, in the Breviary of Tours, which was printed in the year 1612, the feast of St. Lidorius is prescribed to be celebrated at the 13th of September with a double rite; and in the Prayer and in the lesson on the saint's Life, his body is said to be kept in that church, that is, in the metropolitan church. This was built with greater amplitude where the church of St. Lidorius had been, which Baillet writes is enclosed in the choir. But the metropolitan church was formerly sacred to St. Mauritius, and afterward was dedicated to St. Gatianus, first bishop of Tours. The body of St. Lidorius remained there, as the writers of Tours testify (although in a certain bull of Adrian II in Baronius at the year 871 it is said to have been then in the monastery of St. Medard), until the taking of the city in the year 1562 by the French Calvinists, who with sacrilegious impiety seized the case in which were the bones of St. Lidorius the bishop, and either burned them or at any rate scattered them, as Jean Maan relates at greater length in his work On the Metropolitan Church of Tours, p. 199. So much of the cultus and relics of the saint, whose deeds I shall now try to elucidate in a few words.
[5] St. Gregory of Tours, book 10 of the History, chapter 31, no. 2, commends St. Lidorius with a brief but noble eulogy thus: The saint's deeds, who was bishop 33 years, The second (of the church of Tours), in the first year of the reign of Constans, Litorius is ordained bishop; and he was of the citizens of Tours, and this man was very religious. He built the first church within the city of Tours, when there were already many Christians; and the first basilica was made by him out of the house of a certain senator. In his time St. Martin began to preach in the Gauls. And he sat thirty-three years, and died in peace, and was buried in the above-written basilica, which even today is called by his name. If the chronology of St. Gregory is true, St. Lidorius was made bishop in the year 337 or 338; for Constans began to administer the empire with his brothers Constantine and Constantius after the death of Constantine the Great, who died in the year 337, in the month of May. In that very year therefore St. Lidorius could begin his episcopate, or at the beginning of the following, so long as the first year of Constans was running.
[6] and died about the year 370. The saint's death is fixed by most in the year 371. But this year is not so certain that he could not have died in the year 370, nay even in the year 369, if the 33 years of his episcopate were incomplete, as is observed in the French Life of St. Martin written by Gervaise, p. 61. But since the chronology should rather be arranged at the 11th of November, when St. Martin will be treated, I do not discuss more of these things, and fix the saint's death only about the year 370. For the rest, whether St. Lidorius was the second bishop of Tours, and was elected after the see had been vacant thirty-seven years, as St. Gregory of Tours affirms, or whether several presided over the church of Tours before him, as Ruinart believed in his notes on Gregory's History, col. 36, alleging a reason from the Life of St. Martin written by Sulpicius Severus, I do not here inquire. This only I observe: that there were few Christians when St. Gatianus sat, but many when Lidorius built the first church, as Gregory has it, and doubtless far more when he died.