ON ST. EUSTOCHIUS, BISHOP OF TOURS,
In the year of Christ 461.
SYLLOGE.
Eustochius, bishop and confessor, at Tours in Gaul. (S.)
BY J. C.
Beyond what St. Gregory of Tours embraces in a few words about St. Eustochius, scarcely anything has become known to us. The testimony of St. Gregory of Tours about St. Eustochius He mentions him in book 2 of the History of the Franks, chapter 1, in these words: To him (Brictius), dying after the forty-seventh year of his episcopate, succeeded the holy Eustochius, a man of magnificent sanctity. In chapter 14 of the same book he thus determines the years of his episcopate and assigns his successor in the see of Tours: But at the city of Tours, Eustochius the bishop having died in the seventeenth year of his priesthood, Perpetuus is ordained the fifth after the blessed Martin. Finally, in book 10, chapter 31, number 5, he wove this brief elogium of him: Fifth, Eustochius is ordained bishop, a holy man and one fearing God, of senatorial stock. They say that he founded churches through the villages, at Brixæ, Iciodurum, Luccæ, Dolus. He also built a church within the walls of the city, in which he laid up the relics of the holy martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, which were brought to St. Martin from Italy, as St. Paulinus mentions in his letter. And he sat seventeen years, and was buried in the basilica which bishop Brictius had built over St. Martin. These things we shall weigh in a few words, the memory of St. Eustochius in the sacred calendars being first set forth.
[2] and his The Roman Martyrology announces our saint on this day thus: At Tours, of St. Eustochius, bishop, a man of great virtues. The Antwerp, the Greater Antwerp, the Utrecht, the Louvain, the Brussels codices, and very many others among the appendices to Usuard agree, except that they write corruptly, as Sollier notes, Eustachius for Eustochius, which error Greven followed and Molanus corrected. I wonder that in the ancient Martyrology of the church of Tours which Martène published in volume 3 of the Anecdota no mention is made of St. Eustochius, bishop of that city. Baronius in Note g cites Bede: but the enlarged one, for our own is silent about the saint, and d'Achery's metrical one. Our own Florarium of the Saints has the same about the saint as Molanus. The Breviary of the church of Tours printed in the year of Christ 1612 prescribes an Office of St. Eustochius with a semi-double rite; the fourth Lesson, which alone is proper to the saint, contains those very things which I have recounted from Gregory. Another Breviary of the same church published 23 years later recites the same Lesson, but the Office is appointed to be recited with a double rite, and it adds besides this proper Collect: Be favorable to us thy servants, we beseech thee, O Lord, through the glorious merits of this thy holy confessor and pontiff Eustochius, who rests in the present church, that by his loving intercession we may always be protected from all adversities. Through our Lord, etc.
[3] The year of St. Eustochius's death St. Gregory of Tours thus designated in book 1 On the Miracles of St. Martin, chapter 6. the year of his death and of his entering on the episcopate Martin, chapter 6. In the sixty-fourth year after the passing of the glorious lord Martin, the blessed Perpetuus obtained the chair of the dignity of the see of Tours. St. Perpetuus succeeded our saint: therefore, since nothing persuades to the contrary, the death of St. Eustochius is to be bound to that same year. Moreover our Henschen, in volume 1 of April at the 8th day, in the Life of St. Perpetuus, made this year agree with the year of Christ 461, from the epoch of the death of St. Martin, which before the Life of St. Sigebert, king of Austrasia, §7, he had shown to have happened on the Kalends of February in the year of Christ 397: whence to the aforesaid year there flow the 64 years which Gregory places between. Henschen's epoch was followed by Le Cointe in his Annals, John Maan in the Church of Tours, Grandami, Baillet here, the writers of the Literary History of France, volume 2, page 619, and others, while Pagi, Gervais the provost of St. Martin's of Tours, and not a few others protest. I for the present adhere to Henschen with the aforesaid writers, and hold that St. Eustochius came to the see of Tours in the year 444 and passed from it to heaven in the year 461; and I shall depart from this opinion if the reasonings of others prevail, which will be examined at the Life of St. Martin.
[4] a few things to be observed in St. Gregory's words. Concerning St. Gregory's statements it is to be observed that St. Eustochius in book 2, chapter 14, is set as the fourth bishop of Tours after St. Martin, but in book 10, chapter 31, as fifth in order. But Gregory in the second place begins the series from Gratianus, Justinian and Armentius not being counted, who sat at Tours when St. Brictius, the predecessor of St. Eustochius, had been unjustly expelled; but in book 2 he leads the order from Brictius, the fourth bishop of Tours, between whom and St. Eustochius he gives place to those two bishops, and these being received into the order, our saint is rightly set as the fourth from St. Martin; nor does the passage seem corrupt, as Henschen supposed in the article on St. Perpetuus. For the rest, the districts where St. Eustochius founded churches Ruinart thus enumerates and designates in his Notes: Brixæ is to Valois Brisag; Iciodurum, Iseure on the borders of the Turones and the Pictones; Luccæ, Loches, a famous place on the Indre; Dolus, finally, a place not far from the same river. He then observes in the same place that the letter of St. Paulinus which is here praised, in book 1 On the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 47, has perished. St. Eustochius was present at the council of Angers celebrated in the year 453; the body of the holy bishop, long honored in the church of St. Martin at Tours, was profaned and plundered by the Calvinists in the month of May of the year 1562, as Gervais teaches in the Inventory which he appends to the Life of St. Martin from authentic documents.