ON ST. FERREOLUS OF LIMOGES, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, IN GAUL,
After the year 591.
PrefaceFerreolus, bishop and confessor, at Limoges in Gaul. (S.)
BY J. S.
[ ] The first perhaps among the martyrologists to announce the memory of St. Ferreolus, bishop of Limoges, in his General Catalogue of the Saints The Saint mentioned in some Martyrologies, and venerated who are not in the Roman Martyrology, was Filippo Ferrari, in these few words: At Limoges, of St. Ferreolus the bishop, praising the tables, the Calendar, and the records of Limoges. Andreas Saussay praises St. Ferreolus with a longer elogium, in which he has embraced almost everything which has become known about his deeds. The same Ferreolus the brothers Sainte-Marthe honor with the title of Saint in the Gallia Christiana, and afterwards Denis de Sainte-Marthe, both in the catalogue of the bishops of Limoges: and many others have celebrated the sanctity of Ferreolus as beyond doubt. Baillet too wrote his Life, as of a Saint, on this day. Nevertheless Castellain in his Universal Martyrology, page 930, calls him only venerable, and believes that it was by an error that he is called a Saint by Baillet. But even if Baillet wrongly understood of Ferreolus what is said in Gregory of Tours of another Saint, the sanctity of Ferreolus and his cult in the church of Limoges does not on that account cease to be certain. For every doubt is removed by the Breviary of Limoges, in which an Office of St. Ferreolus is prescribed, and indeed in the one which we have printed in the year 1625, to be celebrated with a double rite, on this eighteenth day of September. Now all is read from the common of a Confessor Bishop except three lessons presently to be given.
[2] But that the cult of St. Ferreolus is ancient is gathered from the translations of his relics, for at least several centuries: his body several times translated. to be mentioned below in the Acts. There is added Bernard Gui, who flourished at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in his Miscellanies on the Saints of Limoges, in Labbe's Bibliotheca, volume 1, page 632, where he has thus: St. Ferreolus, bishop of Limoges, confessor, is venerated at Nexon in a shrine. Whose feast is kept there on the feast of St. Ferreolus the martyr of Vienne, that is, on the eighteenth of September. Of his relics honored at Nexon the same author again makes mention in Labbe, volume 2, page 267, in the Deeds of the Bishops of Limoges. Geoffrey, Prior of Vigeois (who at page 290 says that he wrote in the year 1183), in the same place at page 286 speaks thus about the cult, or about the translations, of St. Ferreolus: The body of saint Ferreolus, confessor and bishop of Limoges, was translated to Les Tours by the ancient nobility of the princes of Les Tours, from the monastery of St. Augustine (for the said monastery of St. Augustine, since it is outside the walls of the town and city of Limoges, was destroyed on account of the wars of tyrants, Goths, Vandals, and many others), and afterwards was carried to Nexon by the said prince of Les Tours, and placed upon the altar of the church in a golden shrine on the Kalends of September, in the reign of Theodebert, in the time of Pope Hilary. These things indeed are not without manifest anachronisms, when Pope Hilary or Hilarus is joined with king Theodebert, than whom he was much older, and with the translation of St. Ferreolus of Limoges, who was not yet born when St. Hilarus presided over the Roman Church. To the incursions of the Goths and Vandals too the destruction of the church of St. Augustine is not rightly attributed. Yet even so the words given suffice for us to believe that St. Ferreolus was venerated, not only in the twelfth century, in which they were written, but also some centuries earlier, and in all likelihood in the first centuries after his blessed death. But the faults of the chronological arrangement we shall pardon the author, though by no means follow.
[3] His Acts already published, and to be reprinted; they labor under faults: The Life of St. Ferreolus of Limoges was published by Labbe in the praised Work, volume 2, page 527, and he says that it was copied from the ancient Breviaries of Limoges. The same we have in manuscript from the collection of André du Chesne, most famous for his published Works. I have collated both and found them agreeing exactly even in their wording. But those Acts cannot have much authority, both because they do not seem very ancient, and because by a shameful anachronism they connect St. Ferreolus with St. Leo the Pope, who is a whole century older, and affirm that he was ordained bishop by St. Leo, and because they contain certain other things more wonderful than credible, as I shall observe in the Annotations. I shall nevertheless give the Life praised, since we have no better. It is likely too that what is narrated in it about the virtues and certain deeds of St. Ferreolus was taken from older Acts. But that the studious reader may understand what the people of Limoges in the past century believed more probable about the deeds of St. Ferreolus, I here subjoin in continuous discourse three lessons from their Breviary already praised, composed partly from the said Life, partly from St. Gregory of Tours.
[4] Ferreolus, born at Limoges, imbued with the liberal disciplines, a compendium of his deeds from the Breviary. flourished with an admirable holiness of life. For, the pomp of the world being cast off, his body subdued by the use of a hair-shirt made of camel's hair, by daily fasts (except on Sundays), and by frequent genuflections, he presented to God a mind intent on unceasing prayers. Burning with the ardor of piety, he undertook a journey to Rome for the sake of venerating the relics of the holy Apostles and martyrs. In which pilgrimage he conferred health on many and showed to many the way of salvation. Returning to his native soil, sought by the wishes of clergy and people, he took upon himself the burden of the bishopric of Limoges. In that office he so bore himself that he omitted no duty of a diligent shepherd. At which time, when the province of Limoges was afflicted with grave diseases, and those incurable by human art, the holy Bishop, bearing a fatherly care for his own, fasting for three days, sprinkled with ashes, the Sacrifice being offered with weeping and groaning, obtained health by his prayer in the basilica of the blessed Martial. And he prevailed with such authority among the people that, as Gregory of Tours attests, he freed Marcus, the referendary of king Childeric *, who was exacting heavy tributes, from the imminent peril of death. He gladly spent his wealth on building sacred edifices. For the same Gregory of Tours writes that the basilica of saint Martin in the city of Brive, burned by an enemy attack, its very marble columns dissolved by fire, was wholly restored by Ferreolus. At last, the time of his death being known, having exhorted the clerics to fulfill every part of their office, and having also consoled the mourners, on the fourteenth of the Kalends of October he rendered his blessed soul to God. Whose body, first laid in the church of saint Paul, was thence, on account of its ruin, translated to the monastery of St. Augustine, and, when that was destroyed by an incursion of enemies, to the castle of Les Tours, and lastly to Nexon. So far the Breviary, in which the chronological arrangement is almost neglected. The only chronological note in it is from the mention of king Chilperic: for so it is to be read, not Childeric, as was wrongly printed.
[5] Let us therefore investigate such chronological arrangement as we may, and at the same time examine some facts, The Saint promoted to the episcopate between 565 and 579: before we reprint the Life. In the catalogues of the bishops of Limoges St. Ferreolus is placed after Exotius, whose Epitaph Fortunatus wrote in book 4, poem 6. He says there that Exotius died when he had spent three lustra, that is, fifteen years, in the episcopate. But since Ruricius, the predecessor of Exotius, was still alive in the year 549, in which he sent the archdeacon Bantaredus as his delegate to the fifth council of Orléans, as Denis de Sainte-Marthe observes in volume 2 of the Gallia Christiana, column 503, Exotius did not die until about the year 565, or later. Then from a fact presently to be related it becomes known that St. Ferreolus was already bishop in the year 579. Wherefore he seems to have been made bishop between 565 and 579, nor can one stray many years from the truth in saying that he was ordained bishop about the year 570. Saussay in his Gallican Martyrology, on the thirty-first of August, announces the ordination of St. Ferreolus, when, he says, he was consecrated presbyter by St. Firminus, bishop of Limoges, whose successor he was, and was made chorepiscopus. But Saussay confused St. Ferreolus of Limoges with St. Ferreolus of Uzès, who flourished in the same century, and had St. Firminus as his predecessor in the chair of Uzès; but none of these things is true of our Ferreolus of Limoges.
[6] St. Gregory of Tours in book 5 of his History, chapter 29, writes these things: in the year 579 he delivers from death Marcus, king Chilperic's referendary: But king Chilperic ordered new and heavy assessments to be made throughout his whole kingdom.
For which cause many, leaving those cities or their own possessions, sought other kingdoms; thinking it better to live abroad elsewhere than to lie under such a peril … The people of Limoges too, when they saw themselves burdened with such a load, gathering on the Kalends of March, wished to kill Marcus the referendary, who had been ordered to do these things: and would assuredly have done it, had not bishop Ferreolus delivered him from the imminent danger. From this fact Longueval in his History of the Gallican church, volume 3, page 208, rightly observes that St. Ferreolus's authority among the people of Limoges was great, since he was able to restrain a raging people. And further from that authority we can conjecture that he had already been bishop some years when these things happened. Now they were done in the eighteenth year of kings Guntram and Chilperic, which coincides with the year 579.
[7] [he restores the church burned in the year 584: he is present at the second council of Mâcon in the year 585.] Again Gregory of Tours mentions St. Ferreolus in book 7, chapter 10, writing thus: In that season the basilica of the aforesaid blessed Martin at the village of Brive was burned by a great fire kindled by a threatening enemy, so that both the altar and the columns, which had been fitted together of various kinds of marble, were dissolved by the fire. But this house was so repaired thereafter by bishop Ferreolus as if it had suffered no harm. For the inhabitants greatly admire and venerate this Saint, because they very often experience his powers. These last words of Gregory of Tours are so clearly said of the miracles of St. Martin of Brive, of whom we treated briefly in volume 2 of August, page 412, that I wonder Baillet could understand them of St. Ferreolus, whom he would have died before St. Gregory of Tours, because he believed that Gregory was speaking of the miracles of the deceased Ferreolus. But Gregory of Tours speaks of Ferreolus as living: and he alleges the reason why the burned church of St. Martin of Brive was so well repaired, namely because that Saint was held in great veneration among the people on account of his miracles. The matter is referred by Le Cointe to the year 584, in which the burning happened, number 30, where he too believed that Gregory had spoken of the miracles of St. Ferreolus; but afterwards he better understood the author's meaning. In the year 585 the second council of Mâcon was held, in which action was taken against some bishops because they had taken the side of a certain Gundovald, who called himself the son of Chlothar I, and had thus been proclaimed king by some. Of that council Gregory of Tours treats in book 8, chapter 20: the French historians treat of it, who may be consulted. Labbe gives the Acts in volume 5 of the Councils, where at column 988, after thirteen others, partly metropolitans, partly bishops, is read the subscription of Ferreolus, bishop of the church of Limoges, whom many more follow.
[8] He was joined in friendship with St. Aredius the abbot, The Acts to be given have at number 2 that St. Ferreolus was a kinsman of St. Aredius, abbot of Atane, whom at his death he committed to burial. More about these things and about their friendship the Acts of St. Aredius themselves produce, given in us on the twenty-fifth of August; but about their kinship they are silent. In the second Life, page 186, number 29, these things are read: But at the same time in which the soldier of Christ (St. Aredius) was living on earth, Ferreolus the shepherd was present as venerable bishop in the city of Limoges, to govern the people committed to him. But as often as that Bishop was pressed by fevers, or was worn down in grievous pain by some sickness, he would send messengers to the man of God Aredius, that he might intercede more fully with the Lord for him. And he, vigils being celebrated for him, obtained it for his Shepherd, the venerable abbot for his Bishop, the lowly and humble for the exalted. These things suffice to show that SS. Ferreolus and Aredius were joined in mutual friendship; but not likewise to prove their kinship, of which there is no certainty, because the Acts to be published have not sufficient authority.
[9] About the burial of St. Aredius, of which I see Le Cointe and Baillet doubted, both Lives of St. Aredius agree. whom, dying in the year 591, he buries: The former, after relating the death of St. Aredius, continues thus at number 18. And when morning came (after the night in which he had died), a great multitude of people assembled: but also the bishop of the city of Limoges, mentioned above, named Ferreolus, having received news of his passing, hastened with all speed to make his journey thither. Coming there at last, and falling with many tears and lamentations upon the body of the Saint most dear to him, he confessed that this the greatest grief lay upon him, that he had not been able to find him alive when he was in his last hours. Then, when he had decreed that the most sacred body should be carried to the church of the blessed martyr Julian, which the same blessed man had built from the foundations, and be buried there, they could not move the bier on which he lay. When therefore, on account of the impossibility of moving the body, bishop Ferreolus had become both amazed and sorrowful, he enjoined a three days' fast both on himself and on his clerics, and on the whole multitude which had assembled, and admonished them to ask of the Lord that He would designate, all ambiguity being removed, what His own will and that of the Saint himself might be concerning his burial. And so, the three days' fast being completed, they again approach to lift and carry the sacred body. And then by two men only it was raised with the greatest lightness, and borne to burial, all magnifying with mighty voices and magnificent rejoicings the wonders of God and the power of the Saint. The same things are read in the second Life at numbers 51 and 52, where only at the end is added: Therefore, the body being committed to burial after the custom, the aforesaid Bishop returned to his own place.
[10] Further, St. Aredius the abbot died in the year 591. Ferreolus then died in an uncertain year. And so St. Ferreolus survived in that year, and it is likely that he survived longer, since St. Gregory of Tours, who recorded the death of St. Aredius, nowhere speaks of the death of St. Ferreolus, although he praised him twice while living. The praised Sainte-Marthe in his Catalogue of the bishops of Limoges says: We read that Ferreolus passed from this life to the immortal one in the year 595. But at column 552, treating of the monastery of St. Paul, endowed by the Saint, he says of him: Who indeed, by the better chronology, died in the year 597, says our Dom Claude Estiennot, and was buried in the same abbey of St. Paul. I find nothing to prevent either opinion from being true. But for neither do I have a sufficient foundation. Wherefore it is not pleasing to determine anything further, except that St. Ferreolus died after the year 591. For he is not known by any facts after that year. But neither do I find any mention of his successor Asclepius in the whole sixth century. Wherefore I see nothing to prevent St. Ferreolus's having died soon after the year 591, or having survived even for several years.
Annotata* rather, of Chilperic
LIFE
by an anonymous author,
From the edition of Labbe, collated with a manuscript.
Ferreolus, bishop and confessor, at Limoges in Gaul. (S.)
BHL Number: 2900
By an anonymous writer.
[ ] The Saint, born of noble stock, shines with virtues: The blessed Ferreolus, an illustrious man, was, as the authority of earlier writers has left to posterity, a native of the diocese of Limoges. He was moreover holy in work, chaste in body, and abounding in charity; learned in the disciplines of the liberal arts, heavenly in his manner of life, despising the splendor of garments, and used next to his flesh hair-shirts made of camel's hair. On all days, except Sundays, he fasted; he did not drink wine unless so watered that it seemed not to have the appearance of wine. Rising every night at the hour of matins, he afterwards read the Psalter with the litany and collects: by many and frequent genuflections and chafings he subdued his flesh. And when he made his way to the thresholds of the holy Peter and Paul a, he preached the name of the Lord on the road, strengthened the word of God with signs and prodigies, and conferred the remedy of health on all the sick. And when the fame of his sanctity had come to the notice of the supreme Pontiff Leo b, he went out to meet him, and receiving him charitably into his house, and delighted by his most sweet conversations, he rejoiced with the greatest jubilation of heart and mouth. And when, the thresholds of the Saints having been visited, he was preparing to return to his own region, saint Leo the Pope, being taught in a vision, declared that this same blessed Ferreolus was chosen as bishop of Limoges. And presently the same Pontiff Leo, by God's disposing, consecrated the blessed Ferreolus bishop, and, having marked him with the pontifical rank and given him the kiss of peace, sent him with authority granted to the aforesaid city of Limoges, to which God had chosen him, as a shepherd of souls. And when a few days had passed, since by divine revelation his coming was awaited in that city, all the priests, learning of his near approach, going out to meet him with the clergy and people, received him with great joy.
[2] made bishop, he takes care of his flock; he buries St. Aredius: Having therefore obtained the pontifical dignity, the blessed Ferreolus, lest a lamp lit with light should lie hidden under a bushel, began, as a good shepherd, to lay open with living voice to the sheep committed to him by God the teaching of the Catholic faith and the mysteries of evangelical preaching, and by fasting, praying, preaching, and giving many alms, he sowed the flowers of the virtues among the peoples. And when at that time, a plague having arisen in the city of Limoges and in the Limousin from various onsets of diseases, namely dysentery, fevers, and other afflictions, the people were tormented, Bl. Ferreolus, entering with religious men the church of the blessed apostle Martial c, sprinkled with ashes, remained fasting for three days with weeping and groaning; and, that the Lord might free the people from so great a calamity, he offered sacrifice to God. And as he persevered in prayer, an angel appeared, saying: Ferreolus, your prayer has been heard; and at once the plague left the people. For the blessed Ferreolus and Aredius d the holy abbot, sprung, as is reported, from the same kindred, were contemporaries. And when St. Aredius had departed from this world, Bl. Ferreolus, bishop of Limoges, summoned by messengers, came swiftly to his death: coming nevertheless too late, he wept most bitterly over the body of Bl. Aredius, because he had not found him alive, and bishop Bl. Ferreolus reverently committed the same St. Aredius to ecclesiastical burial with the due obsequies and the solemnities of Masses.
[3] he dies devoutly: his body translated again and again. And when he perceived that his last day was near at hand, having gathered the brethren and the clergy he said: Keep the admonitions of Christ, and fulfill his commandments, and fear the dread judgments of God, and let my memory be with you. And when all mourned at his passing, he checked their grief and drove away their weeping with consoling words. Then, refreshed with the divine Sacraments, raising his hands and eyes to heaven, his soul happily departed from the body on the XIV of the Kalends of October. He was buried in the church of St. Paul e: then, on account of the ruin of the church, translated to the abbey of St. Augustine f. At his passing a very great splendor came down from heaven over his house, and flew back again to heaven. The peoples flocking together, they placed him in a certain wooden shrine, so that his hands might remain to be kissed by those who came, through certain little windows of the shrine; whence there was so great
a concourse that he could not be buried until the next day. And when the church of St. Augustine had come to lie deserted through the incursions of the Goths and Vandals g, his body was carried by the ancient nobility of the lords of Les Tours into their castle. Then it was laid up in the parish church at Nexon h, above the altar in a gilded shrine: by whose merits very many remedies of health are granted by the Lord to the sick.