Eugenia

ON ST. EUGENIA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS,

AT HOHENBURG OR ON MOUNT ST. ODILE IN ALSACE.

In the eighth century.

SYLLOGE.

Of the Saint's illustrious lineage, cultus, and relics.

Eugenia, Virgin and abbess, at Hohenburg, or on Mount St. Odile in Alsace (S.)

BY J. P.

The monastery assigned, situate at the fourth milestone from the city of Strasburg, stands on a very high mountain, The situation and beginnings where formerly a castle had stood, and hence it had commonly the name Hohenburg, but in Latin Altitona and Hohenburgum, and now it is everywhere called Mount St. Odile from its first abbess. It received its beginnings in the seventh century from the piety of the said virgin Odile or Otthilia, and from the liberality of her parent, a most wealthy duke, whose name the authors express variously; some call him Adalricus, others Atticus, very many Etico, as may be seen in Jerome Vignier, George Eckhart, Marquard Hergott, and Dionysius Albrecht, to be commended below, who wrote about the true origin of the most serene and most august house of Habsburg-Austria, and who all with unanimous consent derive this origin from the said Etico, however diversely they judge about that same Etico's higher lineage.

[2] of the nunnery, Eugenia, the second abbess of the aforesaid monastery, had that same Etico for her grandfather, being sprung, that is, from Adalbert, Etico's son and successor in the duchy of Alemannia, and from Gerlinde, Adalbert's first wife. These things are so certain among the aforesaid authors that I have hitherto lighted upon no one who called them into doubt, unless you except Mabillon alone, who in the place presently to be cited seems to have thought that Eugenia's parent, though Etico's son, had another name. Not so well ascertained are the deeds of her life, doubtless most holily accomplished; antiquity has transmitted to us only two: the first, that with two sisters she submitted herself in the nunnery of Hohenburg to the rule of her aunt St. Odile; the other, that she was substituted as abbess for the same Odile — whether when she was dead, as most think, or when she was still surviving and voluntarily abdicating the rule, is a question properly pertaining to the Acts of St. Odile, to be illustrated at the thirteenth day of December, on which she is announced in the sacred Fasti. For since some put off Odile's death beyond the middle of the eighth century, on that opinion standing it would have to be said that Eugenia was abbess while her aunt lived, since she appears as such about the year 722, as will be seen at number 7.

[3] Now the first we learn from the Life of St. Odile, written out by an anonymous author in the eleventh century, in which the Saint, as Mabillon judged. The words are these: She (Odile) had also a brother named Adalbert, who had three daughters, of whom one was called Eugenia, another Attala, the third Gundelinda; who, hearing the report of the holy Virgin, they too, kindled with the love of God, thought to leave the world and to hand themselves over to the discipline of their aunt, that, instructed by her examples, they might perfectly learn to subdue in themselves all carnal pleasures and to render a worthy service to the Lord Jesus, that together with her they might merit to receive the unfading reward of eternal life. And she, when she heard their desire, gladly received them, and, having carefully taught them, bound them over to the Lord's service. So in our manuscript transcript, which is noted as taken from the manuscript parchments of the monastery of Windberg in Bavaria, and collated partly with the Manuscript of Corsendonk of the Regular canons, partly with that of Dillingen.

[4] Mabillon published the same Life in part 2 of the 3rd Benedictine Century from the Chesnian manuscript codex, whose illustrious in which the same things are read, some words nevertheless being here and there somewhat changed, which usually proceeds from the copyists. Thus, what in some sort pertains to the present matter, Eugenia's sisters are there written Atalia and Gunlindis, but her father Adalardus, which last change had so much weight with the aforesaid Mabillon that he subjoined this annotation to it: And yet Lazius in the place cited (book 8 On the Migration of nations) does not number Adalardus among the four sons of Adalricus, namely Adalbert, Hatto, from abbot of Reichenau made bishop of Strasburg, Hugh and Bataco. But what he intended by his annotation I do not altogether understand: nevertheless I judge that Adalardus was rightly not numbered by Lazius among the sons of Adalricus or Etico.

[5] Certainly in no document, although Vignier and Eckhart present very many pertaining to Etico's offspring, family does any Adalardus, son of Etico, appear, nor in any genealogical tables, of which I have consulted very many, is a place granted him as his son; but in these Adalbert on the contrary is always placed, and in those there is frequent mention of him. However that may be, I have no doubt that Eugenia's father was named Adalbert. So it is written in three manuscript transcripts of the Life of St. Odile which I have before my eyes; so in another transcript of the same Life from the manuscript codex of the Clermont college of the Society of Jesus at Paris, in Vignier; so in the Genealogy of SS. Odile and Attala, virgins, in Eckhart. Receive the words: This Athicus begot a daughter named Odile, and begot a son named Adelbert. This Adelbert took a wife named Gerlinda, of sufficient nobility, of whom he begot a daughter Atala with two other sisters, namely Eugenia and Gundelinde. So, finally, to pass over more recent writers, it is written in the same Eckhart in the Fragment of a manuscript parchment codex published by John Schilter, which embraces the Life of St. Attala and has it thus: Her (Attala's) father was duke Adelbert, and Gerlindis her mother… And her parents, being noble and just, trained their daughter Attala with her two sisters Eugenia and Gundelinde under the discipline of God. Who, hearing of the devotion of the blessed virgin Odile, who was then religiously ruling, by her father's concession, the convent of the handmaids of God at Hohenburg, fled to her, forgetting their father's house, that they might follow in her examples.

[6] is set forth, Nay, Mabillon himself subscribed to the same opinion in tome 2 of the Benedictine Annals, page 58, in the following words: At this very time (about the year 720) Attala, daughter of duke Adalbert, Odile's brother, ruled the Strasburg monastery of St. Stephen, who had built this convent among the ruins of old Strasburg. He is said to have perished by the stroke of an arrow, and to have left three sons: Liutwin [\], successor of his father's duchy; Maso, founder of the monastery of the same name; and Eberhard, founder of the convent of Murbach; and besides these five daughters, Eugenia, Attala or Atalia, Gutlindis, Savina and Liutgardis, of whom Attala, as we were just now saying, was the first abbess of the nunnery of St. Stephen at Strasburg; but Eugenia and Gutlindis led the religious life under the discipline of their aunt Odile in the monastery of Hohenburg, where Attala herself had likewise been brought up.* Therefore when in Mabillon in the Life of St. Odile Eugenia's father is read as Adalardus, it is an error to be attributed to the copyist: and thus St. Eugenia's illustrious lineage and religious manner of life have been sufficiently demonstrated.

[7] she was the second abbess. That our Virgin presided as abbess over the nunnery of Hohenburg, very many writers besides those already named affirm with unanimous consent: Humbert Belhomeus in the Commentarius prævius to the Acts of St. Hidulph in our tome III of July, pages 112 and 113; the continuators of Gallia Christiana, tome 5, column 839; Hugh Peltre in the Life of St. Odile, published in French at Strasburg in the year 1699; Bucelinus, part 2 of Germania sacra, page 68; Yepes in the Chronicle of St. Benedict, page 400; Ruyr in the Antiquities of the Vosges, part 2, book 4, chapters XI and 12; Crusius in the first dodecad of the Swabian Annals, published in the year 1595, page 276; Bruschius, first Century of the monasteries of Germany, printed in the year 1551, page 154; and Jerome Gebwiler in the little book on the illustrious lineage of St. Odile, gathered, as he says, from ancient and true histories, and published first in Latin, then in German, at Strasburg in the year 1521. Further, why I have cited so many authors here may be gathered from number 9. And the sayings of these and others are confirmed by the instrument of a donation made to the monastery of Honau by Liutfrid and Eberhard, Eugenia's brothers, in the third year of king Theodoric, about the year of Christ 722, which our Virgin subscribed after her brothers thus: The mark of me, Eugenia, though an unworthy abbess, who consented. The whole instrument you have in Mabillon, tome 2 of the Annals, page 696, and in Eckhart, columns 100 and 101. Honau was a monastery of men, founded by Adalbert, Eugenia's father, on an island of the Rhine a little below the city of Strasburg, and consecrated to St. Michael the archangel.

[8] Besides the two things already adduced, nothing about the deeds of St. Eugenia is ascertained by us, Her deeds unascertained, as I had warned above. The very reverend father Dionysius Albrecht, mentioned at number 1, a Regular canon of the most celebrated Order of Prémontré and today prior of the monastery of Hohenburg — for after it had burned down in the year 1546, the sacred Virgins were scattered, and the Premonstratensian canons afterwards inhabited it, restored, with the church — he, I say, the reverend Father Albrecht, having scraped together monuments from every quarter, composed in the German tongue a History of Hohenburg or of Mount St. Odile from its beginnings up to our own times, and committed it to the press of Sélestat and published it in the year 1751. A copy of this that most obliging man transmitted hither as a gift, in which he assigns the whole of chapter 4 of part 3 to St. Eugenia, and confesses likewise that nothing is found written about her Life; he adds indeed that there was found in her tomb, when it was destroyed about the year 1622, a parchment containing a compendium of her Life; but what afterwards became of it is hitherto unknown: in it, he adds, was noted the Saint's day of death, namely the 16th of the month of September, and the same is noted likewise in a document which is kept to this day with the relics in the town of Obernai, of which the discussion will return below.

[9] Indeed I have examined the sacred Fasti and many catalogues of the Saints, both older and more recent, nor is her name inserted in the sacred Fasti; yet her cultus but neither at the said day nor at another have I discovered the memory of St. Eugenia, which I wondered at, since among so many writers, whom for that very reason it has seemed good to reckon up by name and with assigned places at numbers 1 and 7, frequent mention is made of her, and by several the title of Saint is attributed to her. Bucelinus in the place cited says: St. Otthilia was the first abbess of the nunnery of Hohenburg, and St. Eugenia of equal sanctity succeeded her. Bruschius: St. Eugenia, the second lady and abbess of this monastery, lies honourably entombed in the same chapel (in which St. Odile). Gebwiler, whom Ruyr followed, not only calls her Saint in these words: St. Eugenia was the daughter of duke Adelbert and the second abbess of Hohenburg, but affirms that she was also honoured as such in the following: After the holy virgin Odile had died and been buried, the ladies of the upper and lower nunnery of Hohenburg (this second was founded by St. Odile herself at the foot of Mount Hohenburg, and called Niedermünster) took counsel about electing an abbess. And they chose for each monastery (over which Odile alone had before presided) their own abbess: namely Eugenia, daughter of St. Odile's brother, at Hohenburg, and Gundelinda her sister in the lower monastery. These two sister abbesses led an austere and plainly holy life; and therefore after death also they were honoured as holy Virgins. For Eugenia was entombed in the chapel of St. John over against the tomb of St. Odile, etc. So he in the German little book, which alone we have.

[10] Peltre confirms Gebwiler's statements in the book cited, chapter 13: is shown from other writers. St. Eugenia, he says, followed her aunt to heavenly glory a few years after her election: for she governed Hohenburg only fifteen years. Her body was entombed in the chapel of St. John the Baptist on the Epistle side, where it was honoured up to the war of the Mansfelders (about the year 1622), who destroyed her tomb, as will be said afterwards. Other testimonies of the cultus the reverend Father Albrecht brings forward in the aforesaid History of Mount St. Odile, book 3, chapter 4: and first indeed he affirms that there are preserved to this day the litanies of all the Saints of the diocese of Strasburg formerly wont to be chanted, and that into these are inserted the names of SS. Odile, Eugenia, Attala and Gundelinda. Secondly, that in the prayer which they use there by ancient use and custom in the consecration of water for pilgrims, the most holy Mother of God Mary, St. Joseph, and SS. Odile and Eugenia are invoked. Thirdly, that her image was long ago placed upon an altar. Fourthly, that her feast is kept yearly on the 16th day of September, and her sacred relics publicly exposed at Oberehenheim (others write simply Ehenheim), a city of Alsace, distant according to Baudrand three German miles from Sélestat and as many from Strasburg. Of this cultus I shall add a few things, after I have reported what was done with the sacred body, and in what manner the people of Obernai obtained those relics.

[11] Her tomb is destroyed by the heretics; The aforesaid Peltre, as he had promised in chapter 13 that he would do, sets forth in chapter 19 how the Saint's tomb, untouched up to the year 1622, was destroyed by the sacrilegious fury of the Mansfeld soldiers. He premises first that about the said year they burst into Alsace, filled everything with fear and terror, and at last penetrated to Mount St. Odile, and there, fire being cast in, reduced all the buildings to ashes. But when the army had gone on into Lorraine, Francis Bornius (the words of the aforesaid author are put from French into Latin), doctor of sacred Theology, counsellor of the Archduke (Leopold of Austria, at that time bishop of Strasburg), and parish priest of Obernai, sent his vicar to the mountain, to explore what damages the enemies of our religion had inflicted. Several deputies from the magistracy of the city accompanied him, which desired a faithful account of the matter drawn up according to the rule of law. Here the author cites in the margin the account of the consul Pistorius and of the citizens of Obernai, made in the year 1650.

[12] the sacred bones preserved not without a prodigy The deputies (so Peltre goes on, nearly thus) found at first nothing but rubble, ashes, stones and rocks even then burning; a spectacle indeed which had begun to strike them with a huge sense of compassion, when the gladness of finding the tomb of St. Odile without injury pressed down the grief they had conceived. It is true indeed that some blows had been struck upon it by the soldiers, traces of which were discerned, but, the divine providence forbidding, they had not gone further. It had not fared in the same way with the sepulchre of St. Eugenia; the Mansfeld soldiers had broken it open; nevertheless, whether because they had only opened it to carry off what precious things they had vainly hoped to find in it, or because the sweet odour which the tomb exhaled had inspired them with veneration and with horror of the crime about to be perpetrated, it is certain that the Saint's sacred bones were left there together with the parchment on which were inscribed in a few words the time and the sanctity of her life and death.

[13] are honoured with great honour. Those relics, carried to Obernai by the vicar and the other deputies with all the reverence that could be, were deposited with the parish priest of the city, where they did not cease to send forth a heavenly odour, as the consul Pistorius and several others who beheld them have often testified. Afterwards (in the year 1624) the most illustrious Adam Peetz (suffragan of the bishop of Strasburg), the sacred relics being placed in a gilded wooden case, the clergy of the neighbouring places having been convoked, and with the rite of suppliants

the procession being drawn up in order, with the abbot of Stival and an innumerable multitude of the people accompanying, solemnly carried them back to the mountain. Thus the aforesaid Peltre, in the preceding century superior of the Premonstratensian canons on Mount St. Odile, after he had stayed thirty years on that same Mountain and had diligently enquired into every point, as I understand from his letters sent long ago to our Elders with the aforesaid little book. Almost the same things are related by the reverend Father Albrecht, prior of the place today, in the History published in German: and both of them, in confirmation of the matter narrated, produce the letters of the most illustrious lord count von Aldringen, bishop of Tripoli, suffragan and vicar general of Strasburg, written in the Latin tongue at Rouffach in the year 1632 on the 24th day of February to the Archduke Leopold commended above, and, as Peltre says, taken from his true original in 1666, which, although they are somewhat long, I have judged should be transferred hither at least for the greater part, because they were written by reason of the relics of St. Eugenia, and clearly show in how great esteem they were at that time.

[14] Most serene and most powerful Archduke, Prince and Lord. Action was then taken about repairing the damage Your most clement Serenity will deign to recall how about ten years ago those sacrilegious Mansfelders, among other sacred places, consumed with fire all the buildings on Mount Hohenburg, and among the rest those four chapels also, sacred to the holy virgin Otthilia, together with the greater church; which nevertheless your Serenity, in the most happy time of your administration, had at great expense and with the undying glory of your name raised up from the old rubble and made illustrious: as afterwards in process of time the celebrity of this place grew so great, on account of the daily miracles, that in the whole bishopric of Strasburg we have none like it.

[15] But when I saw that, on account of the aforesaid fires, to the church and to St. Eugenia's burial-place the ancient devotion of the faithful was gradually failing, I thought it belonged to my office that the old buildings of those churches should, as far as might be, be restored: and because, in gathering and clearing away the rubble, there were found here and there your Serenity's arms cast down and partly burned, partly also broken, I saw to it that, for your Serenity's merit and out of my devotion toward the same, they were restored as far as could be to their places with their former comeliness. Whence posterity may gather how much your Serenity formerly performed in this bishopric to the greater glory of God, and to the honour of the holy virgins Otthilia and Eugenia, who rest in this place, according to your piety and archducal munificence.

[16] And although indeed the aforesaid sacrilegious Mansfelders strove to break open with hammers and other instruments the sepulchres of the aforesaid holy Virgins, inflicted by the heretics; and sacrilegiously to carry off thence their sacred relics, and to blot out their memory: yet behold how wonderful God is in His Saints, who deigned to prove by a certain singular miracle that He had already from eternity ordained that the bodies of these holy Virgins should here rest in peace and remain buried together. For although those incendiaries wished with all their might to break open the sepulchre of St. Otthilia and sacrilegiously to steal the relics of St. Eugenia, yet that place became so terrible to them that, to the perpetual memory of the deed and the confusion of all heretics, they were compelled to leave the sepulchre of St. Otthilia untouched, and to restore the relics of St. Eugenia which they had snatched away. All which things I have written somewhat more fully to the most serene Infanta, most humbly asking that she would deign, out of her piety toward that Patroness, to restore and adorn the sepulchre of St. Eugenia, which still remains to be repaired. Of whom indeed, as also of the most serene house of Austria, although I am a natural subject, yet because I have hitherto become known neither to the most serene Infanta herself nor to her court at Brussels, therefore I most humbly ask your Serenity that you would most clemently deign to commend to the same most serene Infanta, by your authority with her, not only these my enclosed letters directed to her, together with my pious intention, but also my own person, etc.

[17] but about the same time the sacred bones were lost: That both letters were most kindly received at the court of Brussels Peltre indicates, but that the hoped-for effect did not follow; because the most pious princess of Belgium to whom the entreaties had been directed, Isabella Clara Eugenia, departed this life at Brussels not long after, namely at the end of the year 1633. A more likely cause for the effect not following Albrecht alleges, namely the irruption of the Swedes into Alsace about the same year 1632, on which occasion he says that the relics of St. Eugenia were lost, together with the gilded case in which they had been enclosed in the year 1624, before they were carried back from the city of Obernai to Mount St. Odile. Peltre likewise acknowledges that they have been lost from that time, yet suspects that they were laid away by someone on account of the said war, who then died without indicating the place.

[18] yet some relics survive elsewhere and are honoured. However that may be, there survive elsewhere to this day at least some remains of the holy Virgin, as the same Albrecht and Peltre testify: for before the body was translated to the Mountain, a notable bone was left as a gift in the church of Obernai, which, enclosed at the city's expense in a statue magnificently cast of silver, is exposed to public veneration. Albrecht adds that he himself saw noted in the book of the said church that every year in that same church, the relics of St. Eugenia being exposed, a votive Mass of the Most Holy Trinity is sung in her honour on the 16th day of September. But the same Albrecht is author also that relics of the same Saint are kept elsewhere; for, as he reports in the cited chapter 4 of book 3, when Adam Petz — the same whom Peltre above named Peetz — consecrated a church at Willgottsheim, or Wiltheim, in Alsace, he placed upon its altar relics from the bones of St. Eugenia, and did the like in other churches of this diocese as well: nay, by the same testimony, in the year 1735 the most illustrious John de Paros, suffragan and vicar general of the bishopric of Strasburg, being about to consecrate a new altar in the same Willgottsheim, found in the old one the relics of St. Eugenia placed there by Adam Petz, and, having venerated them exceedingly, set them apart for further cultus. Whence the aforesaid Petz obtained the said relics it is easy to gather; for he, granting the sacred bone to the people of Obernai in the year 1624, doubtless reserved to himself also some particles of the body. And let these things said suffice concerning St. Eugenia. Of St. Attala her sister we shall treat at the third day of the month of December, and on the same occasion perhaps also of Gundelinda the other sister; for Albrecht, although he judges that her sanctity and cultus are established well enough, yet confesses that he does not know whether her festive commemoration is kept on any determined day. Of St. Odile, their aunt, more will come to be said at the 13th day of the said month of December, when it will be possible to show by the solid arguments of Peltre and Albrecht that the body of St. Odile is even now preserved in the church of Hohenburg, against Lubin and Saussay.

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