ON ST. SALABERGA, ABBESS,
AT LAON IN BELGICA SECUNDA
About the year DCLXV.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Salaberga, abbess, at Laon in Belgica Secunda (S.)
BHL Number: 7464
BY J. C.
§ I. St. Salaberga's holy kinsfolk: her memory among the martyrologists: the Acts: the age of her biographer.
[ ] St. Salaberga was the daughter of Gundoin, a man most powerful among the magnates, the sister of Bodo bishop of Toul, the wife of Baso, St. Salaberga's noble lineage and her holy kinsfolk, who was dear beyond most to king Dagobert II, and the most blessed mother of two sons, Eustasius and Baldoin or Balduin, and of three daughters, Saretrudis, Ebana and Anstrudis, nearly all of whom the people of Laon venerate among the Saints with a special cult. And of St. Bodo indeed we have treated in our Work on the eleventh of September, of St. Balduin the martyr on the eighth of January, and of St. Anstrudis we shall have to treat on the twenty-second of October. Henschen gathered a few things from the Martyrologies at the first of May concerning St. Blandinus, which name is said in the Acts below to have belonged to Baso. Whether he is the same as ours, as seems likely, and those matters which pertain to Eustasius, may be discussed in the supplement of the Work. The people of Laon honor the latter on the Kalends of May, the former on the Nones of the same month. Mabillon notes, in vol. 1 of the Benedictine Annals p. 440, that all these are likewise found in the Calendar of Saints prefixed to the Psalter of Hemma queen of the Franks, and that among them Gundoin holds a place at the third of the Kalends of November. Today the Roman Martyrology announces: At Laon, of St. Salaberga abbess; and Hugh Ménard has the same in the Benedictine Martyrology. It is remarkable that in the genuine Ado, in Usuard, in Rabanus, in Notker no mention at all is made of our Saint, most celebrated as she was in life and after death for virtues and prodigies. In the Additions to Usuard in Sollier the Matricula Carthusiana Ultrajectensis agrees with the Roman Martyrology. The Luxeuil codex has it thus: At Lugdunum Clavatum, of St. Salaberga the handmaid of Christ, who was mother of three hundred nuns, at whose burial-place bright virtues were made manifest after her death.
[2] Greven weaves a more prolix eulogy. On the same day, he says, her memory among of St. Salaberga widow and abbess, who, born in the suburban district of the Leuci of noble parents, when she had recovered the lost light of her eyes by the intercession of Bl. Eustasius the abbot, and when her husband was dead — to whom she had been married at the command of king Dagobert — first lived in the suburb of Langres upon her paternal inheritance, and then at Laon, having built a monastery, and presiding over nearly three hundred handmaids of Christ gathered together, rested, renowned for her life and her miracles. Molanus celebrates the Saint in these words: In the city of Lugdunum Clavatum, the deposition of St. Salaberga abbess, who, learned in the divine law, giving herself assiduously to vigils and prayers, led a manner of life made illustrious by the grace of virtues and miracles. Wion has the same as Molanus, and the German Martyrology the same as Greven, except that it adds that Salaberga was blind from birth, and wrongly interprets Lugdunum as Lyon. Peter Galesini records the Saint's memory thus: In the monastery of Lugdunum, of St. Salaberga virgin, who, set over three hundred virgin nuns, shining before all by the example of every holiness and renowned for miracles, fell asleep in the Lord; and he cites in his Notations the Additions of Molanus; but he does not call her a Virgin, who was twice married and the parent of many children. Yet the same is found in certain manuscripts, doubtless because she presided over a choir of virgins. Certainly our manuscript Florarium agrees: On the same day, of St. Salaberga virgin and abbess. She was renowned for miracles and saw admirable visions and among other things foreknew her own departure. Finally the author of the Life of St. Agilus asserts that St. Salaberga also preserved her virginity inviolably; but either that is an error of the biographer, or it must be expounded in the same sense: concerning which matters the discussion will recur again below at num. 20.
[3] the martyrologists. At Laon, To the same day likewise St. Salaberga is assigned by Benedict Dorganius, by Bucelin, and here and there in other Calendars of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict. At the twenty-third of September Maurolyco commemorates her briefly: In the territory of Lugdunum, of Salberga abbess. In the manuscript Calendar of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict which we possess, her translation is noted on that day; but Mabillon notes at the Saint's Life that it is celebrated on the eleventh of the Kalends of March. Finally in an ancient
Missal of Laon, printed in the year 1506, there is found in the Mass of SS. Maurice and his Companions a Commemoration of St. Salaberga, taken almost entirely from the Common of Virgins. The first prayer is: Hear us, O God our salvation, that as of blessed Sallaberga thine elect &c. And these are nearly all the things which I have found among the martyrologists concerning the Saint. Further, you see, reader, that the Saint is everywhere here called Salaberga, which accordingly I have judged should be retained, although by Jonas in the Life of St. Eustasius she is called Adalberga, and in other ancient manuscripts not seldom Sadelaberga, and sometimes Sadaberga and Sadleberga: for the matter seemed of too slight moment for this not to be conceded to common orthography and to Latin ears. Now concerning Laon, where the Saint died and where she is everywhere celebrated with a particular cult, a few things must be premised, and these chiefly from Mabillon in the Notes prefixed to her Life, Century 2 p. 421, printed among the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict. That city is called by the Latins by another name Lugdunum Clavatum, but by the French Laon. It is a city of Belgica Secunda, three miles distant from Prémontré, seven from Noyon on the west, and six from Soissons on the south, and set upon a mountain. Concerning the origin of the name there are various conjectures of the learned, which may be seen in Valois and in the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, vol. 9 col. 507.
[4] where she died, she is chiefly honored. Laon is an episcopal city subject to the metropolitan see of Reims. It yields to hardly any of the more illustrious towns of Gaul, says the oft-to-be-praised Mabillon, if you regard the monuments by which it is walled about on every side and adorned within; which he enumerates one by one, and they may be consulted in the same place. Most pertinent to our purpose is the church of St. John the Baptist and its monastery, which St. Salaberga founded out of her own and those very great resources, endowed, adorned by her virtues, and finally enriched by the venerable relics of herself and of her children. St. Salaberga's sacred treasures are preserved there, as the same Mabillon witnesses p. 432, enclosed in a shrine ornamented with silver and brass; and on the back of the altar (whether the high altar, or another erected to her herself?) these verses are read, engraved in ancient times:
Here, Salaberga, venerable, thou reposest beneath the heavy vault, Eustasius, Anstrudis, Baso, Goardus, Boso;
from which you may gather her ancient and famous cult.
[5] The writer praised in the same place appends another matter: namely that in that monastery there is preserved a little bell, Relics famous there, which, tied to the neck of a hind, was brought by divine agency to Salaberga for the driving off of the dangers of thunder and lightning, by which her holy daughter Anstrudis was much terrified. Hence he asserts that St. Salaberga was anciently wont to be painted with a hind bearing a little bell on its neck. That the power divinely bestowed against the onset of thunder long afterwards clung to that little bell, a constant tradition attested by very many experiments proves, he says, and this old inscription gives warning: The relics of St. Salaberga and this present bell drive away fevers, and it drives away the very thunders. To this end water is wont to be blessed in the hollow of that little bell and given to those sick of fever; the credit of all which rests with Mabillon, who relates the tradition and the testimonies. Certainly the custom flourishes in the Church of blessing little bells against storms and lightning, not a few of which have been brought into our Belgium from Italy and have obtained the confidence of pious men. Innumerable examples occur also from elsewhere of persons healed of various sicknesses by drinking water in which the relics of the Saints had been dipped. Of the utensils which St. Salaberga used, there are preserved to this day in the abbey of Laon a wooden staff covered with silk, and a Breviary of the divine Office written in hooked letters. Whether the Saint's body is entire in that silver shrine, I cannot say.
[6] Very rarely indeed, nay almost never, are her sacred remains recorded as being exposed elsewhere for veneration. and of Bocholt. The Acts I have before my eyes a document so worn and eaten away, and written with ink so faded to yellow, that I can scarcely reach the words and their sense by divination, and not all of them at that. It was laid aside by my predecessors up to this day, and bears such a title at its head: Here begins the order how it shall be observed in the showing of the holy relics in the parish church of Bocholtz in the year MDLIX. In the third place are enumerated relics of St. Salaberga to be exhibited. I find in Baudrand Bocholt or Buckolt, a little town of Germany in Westphalia and in the jurisdiction of the bishop of Münster, on the river Aa, situated on the borders of Cleves, and distant 3 German miles from Wesel, and 5 to the north toward Groll. Whether the same place is here designated, what part of the holy body is there, and whether it is preserved to this day, and of what authority the sheet written by a barbarous hand may be, I do not know: I pass on to the notice of the Acts. No small part of them was first brought to light from a manuscript by André du Chesne, and printed among the Writers of the History of the Franks, vol. 1 p. 647 and following. Then Luc d'Achery in the additions to the Works of abbot Guibert p. 679 published the Life of St. Salaberga, somewhat different in other respects from du Chesne's and much more prolix than it, as being enlarged by a Prologue and by the Miracles wrought by the Saint before her death.
[7] Mabillon inserted that Life in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, Century 2, from p. 421, various as to the wording, ancient and collated it with the manuscript codices of the Cistercians, of Longpont, and of St. John of Laon. Of two other writers, who after the fire of Laon adorned the ancient Acts with their own style, namely in the twelfth century, he gives notice in his Preliminary Observation num. 4. We too have two transcripts of the Life of St. Salaberga, sent long ago to our predecessors: one is taken from a manuscript of the monastery of Acey, and was written by the hand of Chifflet, our distinguished helper; the other was supplied by the Rev. D. Nicolas Belfort, a Canon Regular, to whom likewise we owe very much. In this latter I find noted in the margin: D. Belfort had this from the Longpont manuscript. The Prologue is lacking, and elsewhere too it differs not a little from Chifflet's and from that published by Mabillon. It is the very one which Bollandus had before his eyes when, in the Deeds of St. Balduin the martyr, vol. 1 of January p. 502 at the eighth of January num. 2, he wrote: We have the Life of St. Salaberga transcribed from the Longpont codex by Nicolas Belfort, and, as we think, a little polished up. The same judgment concerning the manuscript is thus noted in the margin: He seems to have changed the style, which appears altogether most certain. Besides these we received from the archives of Fr. Pierre François Chifflet a Life of St. Salaberga from two manuscript codices of the monastery of St. John of Laon. The transcript had been sent to the praised Chifflet by the Rev. D. Bellotte, a canon of Laon, who in a quite long letter which he prefixes to the Acts speaks thus in French: What you will find here concerning the Life of St. Salaberga is not a continuous copy of all that is contained in the manuscript; for I have omitted many flowers, texts and examples of sacred Scripture, which I judged would be useless to you, since they contribute nothing to the truth of the history. But these excepted, I have transcribed the rest from head to heel, with neither a word nor a syllable changed.
[8] and more recent. What is to be published, He had premised at the very outset of the letter: Here is the Life of St. Salaberga, which I once promised you at your request. I have extracted it from the manuscript of the abbey of St. John of this city. I found it written there twice: but I send an extract of one only, because both agree in sense, though they differ in words. But what further things I found in the other, I have added at the edge of the page. The marginal notes agree here and there with the text of the other transcripts and of Mabillon; the Acts themselves are much more contracted than the rest. But, as Bellotte warned, he cut away from them very many things which do not make for the history. Those things which he passed over could easily be assigned and supplied one by one, but it has not seemed worth the trouble to attempt it. For the whole Acts are written in a more polished style, and so very probably are those very ones whose prologue Mabillon exhibits in his Preliminary Observations num. 4. Let the opening serve as a sample: The blessed and venerable mother Salaberga was born of her father Gonduin and her mother Saretrudis on the borders of the city of Langres, in the land which they call Urnensis, from the river which flows there. But born of a religious and noble stock according to the dignity of the world, she nonetheless shone herself also with a twofold ornament of nobility: for she was distinguished not by the high birth of her ancestors alone, but far more famous by the title of her character and her faith. Which being discovered by sagacious consideration, her parents brought her up with more lavish care. From these things it is easy to judge of the rest. We therefore shall borrow the more ancient Acts from Mabillon, and shall assign here and there the varying readings of our transcripts as compared with them. The primitive author is certainly the same, although the transcripts have been somewhat disfigured either by the carelessness or by the ignorance of copyists. This writer of ours the oft-praised Mabillon and others who have followed d'Achery judge to be contemporary and of nearly the same age, a serious man, and one who, beyond the lot of those times, writes Latin well enough; hence the Acts of St. Salaberga are held in great authority among all, and have contributed not a little to the illustration of that part of the history of the Gauls which pertains to Dagobert II. The age of the anonymous writer Mabillon thus gathers in his Preliminary Observation num. 3.
[9] The author dedicates his composition to bishop Omotarius, which were written by an author of nearly the same age, to Anstrudis the abbess, and to Salaberga. That this Anstrudis, he says, was the daughter of St. Salaberga is established both from her own Acts, to be reported in their place (he there produces them p. 975), and from these words of the Life of St. Salaberga num. XI (with us num. 9): "Salaberga bore a third daughter and called her Anstrudis, who in the course of time, with the whole company consenting, succeeded her in the care and government of the Sisters, and who up to this time, under Christ's favor, still survives with divine privileges." Omotarius without doubt was bishop of Laon about the year DCLXXXV, omitted in the published Catalogues of the bishops of Laon; and Salaberga, greeted after Anstrudis in the Prologue, was a nun of the monastery of Laon. The anonymous author was writing a little after the civil war between Dagobert II and Theoderic III, which arose about the year DCLXXX, and which he testifies below at num. XIII that he had "lately seen." Of these the first and the last abundantly prove that the writer was of nearly the same age, so that we need not have recourse to the marks sought from Omotarius and the other Salaberga. That Omotarius was bishop of Laon is not proved from the unusual title which our anonymous author gives him; whether Mabillon could prove it certainly from elsewhere, I do not know. Certainly the learned authors of Gallia Christiana vol. 9 have produced concerning him no notice save that alone drawn from this Life. Nor are the things he asserts concerning the second Salaberga any more certain, I think. Although, as I have said, there is no need of them, since we have from elsewhere the means of establishing the writer's date with certainty, and of asserting that he wrote as the seventh century was growing old.
[10] From the epochs cited above the writers of the Literary History indeed circumscribe within narrower limits the time [whose age some, within limits too narrow
vol. 3 p. 636 and following. It is certain, they say, that the Life of St. Salaberga was written after the year DCLXXX and before DCLXXXVIII. The first they prove from this, that the Biographer mentions the war waged between Dagobert II and Theoderic III about the year of Christ 680 as a thing not very long past, and of which he professes himself as it were an eyewitness. The second they conclude from this, that Anstrudis, St. Salaberga's daughter and the next abbess of St. John after her mother, to whom our Acts are dedicated, did not survive beyond the year 688. And this reasoning again is altogether legitimate, if only it be certain that St. Anstrudis died before the year 688. But d'Achery, Le Cointe and the Sainte-Marthes, in the praised continuators of Gallia Christiana, bind her death to the year 707, and the first whom I have seen, Mabillon, refers the Saint's death to the aforesaid year 688, and in place of nearly all proof notes thus on page 981: St. Anstrudis passed to the blessed about the year DCXXCVIII, as is gathered from what has gone before. But what those preceding things are, from which he deduces it, I do not sufficiently grasp.
[11] Certainly nowhere in his Notes, or in the Deeds of St. Anstrudis themselves, do they circumscribe. The Saint's father more probably the same does there occur to me any epoch from which her death should be fixed about that year rather than the rest. It is not to the point here to discuss the matter more diligently, but at the fourteenth of the Kalends of November, where St. Anstrudis's memory occurs. Meanwhile I vaguely assign our anonymous author to the end of the seventh century. For the rest, there are very few things which seem to need a fuller explanation or discussion. Yet concerning St. Salaberga's parents and the chronology of her life some things must be premised after our custom. The Saint was born of illustrious parents, her father Gundoin and her mother Saretrudis, being born before her two brothers Leuduin and Fulculf. Concerning her mother nothing occurs elsewhere which requires a place here. Mabillon suspects that Gundoin is the same as he of whom it is said in Lothair's Precept concerning Eulania in d'Achery's Spicilegium vol. 12 p. 109: And likewise those (estates) which Gunduin is not unknown to have held in the district of Portois we restore in the same manner with entire completeness. The conjecture is not devoid of probability. Our Longueval, in the History of the Gallican church vol. 3 p. 566, judges that the Saint's father is also the same who in the Acts of St. Germanus the martyr is called duke Gundonius. The oft-praised Mabillon had denied this in his Notes on the Life of St. Germanus abbot of Grandval, printed p. 511 and following of the same Century 2.
[12] is Gundonius the founder of the monastery of Grandval; at least He had brought forward reasons why Gundoin the father of St. Salaberga was not a duke, nor any longer among the living when the monastery of Grandval began to be built by Gundonius. This assertion of his has no proof, except a confirmation promised in what is to be said below, which I nowhere find at all. Truly I do not see by what road Mabillon would have made out that St. Salaberga's father was not a duke. Was it perhaps from this, that nowhere in her Acts is he called duke? But an argument drawn from the silence of a single writer is weak, especially since that same writer adorns Gundoin with distinguished titles, and commends him for nobility, wealth and power; all of which rather persuade us that he bore no ignoble offices in the commonwealth. To these it may be added that St. Salaberga was married to Blandinus by king Dagobert's command, and that such things are related there as intimate that Gundoin was powerful with the king and the court: finally, that Gundonius in the Life of St. Germanus and Gundoin in the Acts of St. Salaberga were both known to Waldebert, and that the names differ by the transposition of one letter only, while almost all the rest agree. These things do not persuade with certainty, I confess, but they make room for a most probable conjecture, especially since there is nothing from elsewhere which proves that they must be distinguished. This certainly is not accomplished by the reason alleged in the second place by Mabillon, which I know not how it could have had any weight with so most learned a man. For how, I ask, is it shown that Gundoin the father of St. Salaberga was not surviving among the living, when Gundonius invited St. Waldebert to him, about to grant an estate for building the monastery of Grandval? Thus far I appeal to his own chronology.
[13] Mabillon did not prove the contrary. In the Benedictine Annals vol. 1 p. 400 he binds the mission of St. Germanus to govern the monastery of Grandval, lately founded by Gundonius, to the year of Christ 647. The death of St. Salaberga he fixes, both in the Notes on the Acts and in the Annals, about the year 655. St. Anstrudis entered upon the government of the convent of Laon after her mother at twenty years of age, as her contemporary biographer witnesses. Therefore she was born about the year 635. Let us grant all the preceding years of that century to St. Salaberga, Gundoin's firstborn, and let us believe, as Mabillon fixes it, that she was freed from blindness and from a flux of blood by St. Eustasius about the year 614. From these it follows that the Saint's father ought not to be said to have been born before about the 80th year of the sixth century. Now if you begin the reckoning from there, according to which Gundoin could count about 25 years when his firstborn was born to him, he will not yet be seventy years old when St. Germanus was set over the governing of the monastery of Grandval: whether that age, and even some years more, may not be conceded to Gundoin without straining credibility, let the reader judge. Certainly that he died before the year of Christ 660 Mabillon nowhere shows, nor anyone else whom I have seen; and the reckoning deduced from thence does not, with me, exceed likelihood, and it remains a probable conjecture that the same father of St. Salaberga was the founder of the monastery of Grandval, which from our chronology will become still more likely. For the rest, in the Life of St. Agilus with us, chap. 3 num. 15, Gundoin is said to be near to the most blessed Agilus by the bond of kinship.
§ II. The place of the Saint's birth. Gleanings from the Lives of SS. Eustasius and Agilus. The remaining chronology of the Acts.
[ ] More probably the Saint was born The place where St. Salaberga was brought forth into the light our biographer assigns thus ambiguously at num. 2: Salaberga therefore was born in a suburban town of the Leuci, bordering on the territory of Langres … The town of the Leuci is the city of Toul, which by another name also is called Tullum Leucorum. But Mabillon rightly notes that not seldom among the ancient biographers Suburbanum is taken for a territory, and he warns that it must be so understood here. The territory of Toul was formerly bounded by that of Langres; but it is uncertain enough to which of the two the districts today lying between were then reckoned: although it is certain that the country of Toul was always very extensive. Hence from the biographer's words the birthplace of our Saint remains doubtful. Another anonymous author, in the oft-praised Mabillon, writes: The blessed and venerable mother Salaberga was born of her father Gundoin and her mother Saretrudis on the borders of the city of Langres, in the land which they call Uternensis, from the river which flows there. Mabillon had at first suspected that by the land Uternensis was designated the district at the sources of the river Saône, commonly La Baronie de Darney: but he corrected the error at the end of part 2 of Century 4 p. 598, where he notes thus: By the land Uternensis understand Le pays d'Ornois, a tract which stretches between the Meuse and the Marne from north to south for about ten leagues, watered by the river Ornain, from which it takes its name. It has a town by the name of Gondrecourt (in Latin Gundoïni curtis), which seems to be St. Salaberga's birthplace… The Uternensian or Urnensian tract is the same as the Odornensian, concerning which see in the Annals of St. Bertin p. 240 in du Chesne and in the History of Tournus p. 212.
[15] The things here most learnedly observed by Mabillon I think to be in every way most true, in the district of Odornois, called by the natives the Pays d'Ornois. if however the place was rightly assigned by the second anonymous writer of the Life of St. Salaberga praised by him, who, if I mistake not, is one of the two more recent writers whose composition he praised indeed for its style, but was unwilling to insert in his own Acts, because they wrote after the twelfth century. Mabillon had gone before into this opinion, preferring to say that St. Salaberga was born in a village of the Vosges named Mosa, where the river Meuse rises, in which village Eustasius is said in the Life num. 4 to have met Gundoin. But that opinion is shaken by the words of our biographer alone; for whether you say that that village was Mosa, which the French call Meuvy, or another called by the natives Meuse and nearer by about three miles to the mouth of the river Meuse, was the Saint's birthplace, you will not thus establish that she was born in a suburban town of the Leuci, but in the territory of Langres, so far as the district of Toul never seems to have extended itself; and therefore I judge that we must adhere to Mabillon's second opinion, which moreover the town that can be seen to have drawn its name from Gundoin favors not a little. Now, before I proceed to fix the remaining chronology, I set forth beforehand certain Gleanings from the Lives of other Saints which pertain to our Saint, lest the intercalary notes grow out too much.
[16] St. Eustasius abbot of Luxeuil heals St. Salaberga Jonas, monk of Bobbio and contemporary writer of the Deeds of St. Eustasius abbot of Luxeuil, in Century 2 of the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict p. 118 num. 4, and in our own Work vol. 3 of March chap. 1 p. 787 num. 5, thus relates the prodigious cure of St. Salaberga from blindness through St. Eustasius. And when he was making his journey, he came to a certain man named Godoin (our Henschen reads from his manuscripts Gundeo) who at that time was staying at the estate which they call Mosa, from the river flowing in that place. He therefore, when he had seen Eustasius, received him into his house as a most welcome gift. Eustasius then, having entered the house and given his blessing first, asks that he present the children which he had. He, obeying, presents two children of good disposition. The man of God, questioning him, says: Hast thou yet other offspring? He confesses that besides one daughter deprived of her eyes, named Adalberta, he has no more. Let her come, says he. And when he had seen her, he inquired whether her youthful mind aspired to the worship of the divine fear? She says, as far as her tender age was able, that she is ready to obey the sacred proclamations. He gave his labor to it, and for two days afflicted his body with fasting, armed his mind with faith, and poured the oil of blessing upon her eyes: at length her blindness deserved, through the intervention of the holy man, to have light.
[17] while she was still very young; The divine mercy therefore restored, by the intervention of its servant, the losses of her sight, so that she who had received light might, after the divine gifts, aspire the more richly to the worship of the fear of God; and she survives to this present time, given to divine services, and provides what is needful not only for her own advantage but for others also. The same benefit divinely conferred on St. Salaberga is related in the Acts of St. Agilus in our Work at the thirtieth of August, in vol. VI of that month num. 15. Here are the words. But when, having gone forward from thence, they (SS. Eustasius and Agilus) were returning to the monastery of Luxeuil, they come to a certain most powerful man named Gondoin, who, resplendent with the pride of high birth and with an enormous abundance of dignity, and to the most blessed Agilus by the bond of kinship
of kinship near, was staying at that time in the estate which they call Mosa, from the river above which it is situated. He received these most holy men and apostles of Christ with due office, as though a gift sent from God, and kept them with him rather long. When they had entered the house, and the blessing had been given first, after many conversations of spiritual doctrine there were offered to them for blessing two sons of the same man, whom, hallowing them with their blessings, they marked out with a true prophecy both that they would flourish in the dignity of the world, and that they would pass happily to the life to come, as afterwards most evidently appeared.
[18] which prodigy is wrongly attributed to St. Agilus. Other errors But the aforesaid man had a daughter deprived of her eyes, named Sadeberga. When therefore the father begged with suppliant prayer that they would come to her aid by the help of prayer, they, calling to mind that they had been sent for this end, that the power of Christ might be more fully manifested through them and the faith of believers strengthened, inquire of the Girl whether she is willing to dedicate her virginity to God, if the divine Majesty should restore to her the light of her eyes. When she had assented, then these holy men together with the Girl kept a three days' fast in sacred prayers. But on the third day, after the solemnities of Mass, the most blessed Agilus anointed her eyes with blessed oil and fortified them with the sign of the Cross. Wonderful thing! For in that very moment the same Virgin received her sight, and most devoutly took the sacred veil, and preserved inviolably the virginity which she had vowed. The same things which I have here recited in the last place are contained in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, Century 2, from p. 316 in almost the same words: which now compare, reader, with the Acts of St. Salaberga to be subjoined, num. 9, and marvel that things so diverse are reported — or rather invented — by contemporary writers, nay that the very names vary, since the Saint, who to our biographer is Salaberga or Sadlaberga (as most of the manuscripts have it), is Sadeberga to the anonymous writer of the Life of St. Agilus, and Adalberta to Jonas.
[19] That Jonas is earlier than the other two biographers is certainly established, since he witnesses that St. Salaberga was still surviving among the living when he was writing the Acts of St. Eustasius, of the writer who composed her Deeds. and the other two certainly did not write before she had died. And concerning ours indeed there is no doubt, since he narrates her death, and at num. 3 witnesses that he had read the Life of St. Columbanus written by that most eloquent man Jonas. Nor does there seem to be more doubt concerning the biographer of St. Agilus, since he says that SS. Eustasius and Agilus prophesied of the Saint's two brothers that they would pass happily to the life to come, … as afterwards most evidently appeared, and our anonymous author writes at the last number that her brother Bodo, by another name Fulculf, hastened to the dying Salaberga to settle the disagreements that had arisen with his Sister. That ours had the composition of Jonas before his eyes no one, I think, will deny who has compared the two narratives. Whether the biographer of St. Agilus saw either of the two cannot certainly be decided. But indeed if this is true, that writer must have been a foolish fabulist, who attributes the deeds of St. Eustasius to Agilus, and asserts that St. Salaberga vowed chastity while still very young, and preserved the same inviolably, while meanwhile she was twice married and the most blessed mother of five children, as I have already noted above. And let it suffice to have observed these things briefly to this end alone, that not much be attributed to the biographer of St. Agilus in those matters which pertain to our St. Salaberga. He certainly is to me a shameless fabulist, if he is as ancient as he professes: for I do not grasp how, writing in the year 690, he could have been ignorant that St. Anstrudis, who had died two years before, was the daughter of the most celebrated Salaberga.
[20] The anonymous writer of the Life of St. Anstrudis, nearly contemporary in Mabillon's judgment in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, Century 2, p. 975 and following, Gleanings taken from the Acts of St. Anstrudis thus begins. In the times of king Dagobert there was in this world a noble man Baso, who, sprung of noble parents according to nature, and made nobler in character by grace, by the counsel of the magnates of the Franks took to wife Salaberga, the religious daughter of the high-born and religious man Gunduin. She, after barrenness, bore to her husband, among a chosen troop of children, a daughter who was called Anstrudis. At number 3: St. Anstrudis, after she had at only twelve years old refused a wealthy marriage, went on to the place in which stands the monastery over which Salaberga, the holy mother of this holy girl, presided, piously governing the company of nuns. Then at the following number: Moreover (the anonymous author continues) the venerable abbess Salaberga, perceiving the dissolution of her body to be at hand, committed the pastoral care to her daughter Anstrudis, long since consecrated to the Lord after her flight from marriage, admonishing her to have care of Christ's sheepfold. And so with the counsel of the bishop of this church of Laon and of the magnates of the Franks who governed this province, and with the assent and election and acclamation of the Sisters then dwelling in this place, under royal license she is consecrated abbess by episcopal blessing: and she was twenty years old when she took Christ's flock under her government.
[21] These things being premised, let us inquire at about what time we may fix the death of St. Salaberga and the rest of her deeds. the Saint's death is bound to various years, Baronius in a marginal Note to the Martyrology binds the Saint's death to the year of Christ 614; Charles Le Cointe refers it to the year 654; Mabillon in the Annals and our Longueval in the History of the Gallican church attach it to 656. Baillet about the year 654 or 655, and about the last Calmet and the authors of the Literary History are of opinion that St. Salaberga passed to the blessed. Baronius's error is refuted by nearly all the names of persons that there are in the Acts, from which any marks for the chronology can flow; the others come nearer, as I now show. St. Ansericus bishop of Soissons had died when the vision of St. Salaberga related in the Acts num. 25 and following occurred. St. Ansericus died between the year 649, in which he translated the bodies of SS. Crispin and Crispinian, and the year 658, in which St. Drausius bishop of Soissons subscribed the Privilege of Emmo for the monastery of St. Peter the Living, in Gallia Christiana vol. 9 col. 338. Therefore the Saint certainly did not die before the year 650, since after that vision she is said in the same place to have been going to remain still for some time among the living. But how long after St. Ansericus's death that vision occurred, and how many years she afterwards survived, seems hardly, nay not even hardly, able to be determined. Yet I believe that St. Salaberga's death is referred by the praised writers some years earlier than it really happened.
[22] which seems to be fixed about the year 665, For the Saint fell asleep on the hundredth day after the likeness of St. Walbert had appeared to her and had foretold her death as imminent on that day. Further, at that time the aforesaid abbot seems already to have been dead: for he nowhere appears at the Saint's dying, and the whole tenor of the vision intimates plainly enough that the discourse is of one dead. Now St. Walbert abbot of Luxeuil is determined by Jean Chifflet, by our Henschen, by Mabillon and by nearly all other writers, from the Catalogues of the abbots of that monastery, to have died on the 2nd of May of the 65th year of that seventh century, after which, the preceding things being admitted, St. Salaberga's death must be deferred. And indeed I do not see what much opposes this opinion. St. Anstrudis succeeded her Mother in the government of the monastery of Laon at only twenty years of age, as her Acts declare. Let us grant that St. Salaberga passed to the blessed in the year of Christ 665; Anstrudis will be reckoned born in the year 645. Let us assign to St. Salaberga six years for the bearing of five children, and ten of preceding barrenness; her second marriage with Baso, contracted at the urging of Dagobert I, will fall in the year 629. From these subtract two years of widowhood, and she may be reckoned born about the year of Christ 610, healed by St. Eustasius about ten years later, given in marriage to Ricrannus at sixteen years old, and dead in about the fifty-fifth year of her age; which chronology, however little it may rest upon undoubted testimonies and epochs, is nevertheless not foreign to likelihood.
[23] which being admitted, the rest of the chronology easily follows. There will indeed have to be moved, in this chronology, the beginnings of the monastery of St. John of Laon from the place where others fix them; but this little opposes my opinion; for there is no reason why the origin of that monastery should be fixed in the year 640 rather than ten years later. For I have bishop Attilus sitting at Laon in the year 650 — he who to our biographer is Attilo — down to the fifth year of Childeric II, in which he subscribed the instrument which Mabillon produces in the Annals at the year of Christ 661 num. XI, and who accordingly could have received St. Salaberga into the city with pomp; I have, if I mistake not, all the rest, since those things are nearly all deduced from the age of Anstrudis alone as determined in her Acts, when she undertook the government of that monastery. Certainly whatever is drawn from thence proceeds by the same track in my chronology; and I warned above that I do not thus far subscribe to the opinion of those who bind St. Anstrudis's death to the year 688, undoubtedly indeed, as they judge, yet without a witness. I set conjecture against conjectures, and hasten on to illustrate our Saint's Acts after our custom, having however first forewarned the reader concerning the marginal notes, that where I assign no manuscript more particularly, he should know that the Chifflet transcript is designated.
THE LIFE
By an anonymous author of nearly the same age.
From Mabillon's edition, Century 2 of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, from p. 422, collated with the manuscript of the monastery of Acey.
Salaberga, abbess, at Laon in Belgica Secunda (S.)
BHL Number: 7463
By an anonymous author.
CHAPTER I.
The Saint's illustrious birth, upbringing, and miraculous healing. Desiring to preserve her virginity, she is joined by her parents to a husband, and when he had died after two months, she is given to a second by order of king Dagobert, and by him receives five children.
[ ] Preface. To the excellent lord, adorned with honor in the priestly mitres, to whom there was abundance of religion a, to Omotarius the father, and also to the priest, to the most chaste virgin of Christ Anstrudis the abbess, and to Salaberga.
I have not delayed to obey your commands, O venerable ornament of parents and of kindly vigor, whereby above all I ought to hammer out with my pen the Life and the order of the deeds of the kindly mother Salaberga, a woman to be set before our own times, so far as the matter allowed and the divine mercy favored. But in this part I judge myself to be very unequal to it: seeing that I am scarcely imbued with the first rudiments of letters, and was brought up in Christian simplicity. But I am mindful of that proclamation of the Lord and Savior who says: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; and that oracle of the Psalmist: Open thy mouth, and I will fill it. Wherefore I beseech the reader (if however anyone, taken with love of the holy Mother, shall resolve to read these deeds, which I have undertaken to weave, though with a rash attempt) not to seek in them Tullian eloquence, nor the fluency of orators, not the little flowers of the philosophers and the diverse assertions of the Stoics; but the truth and simplicity of the history *; for neither does the eagle always fly to the upper air with outstretched wings, but sometimes it is wont, with more relaxed
wings, to come down to the earth, and among royal banquets even cheap apples and wild lettuces are often reckoned the best of all. Our Savior Jesus Christ must be prayed to, that he deign to breathe upon us the breeze of the Holy Spirit, so that, the darkness of the heart being scraped away, he may lend the faculty to those who speak, that we may be able to set forth the acts of the venerable Mother, who ever burned with love of monasteries and churches, and to publish them briefly and concisely to posterity. May he grant strength, through your help, who made the tongues of infants to be eloquent.
[2] The Saint's illustrious birth and upbringing. Salaberga therefore was born in a suburban b town of the Leuci, bordering on the territory of Langres c, most illustrious according to the dignity of the world, of parents by no means of the lowest rank, and in all things devoted to the service of God. But the more illustrious or noble she was by birth, so much the more careful were her parents in the care of her nurture. For since at that time the people of the Bavarians d, whom Orosius e, a most learned man and a knower of histories, calls by the ancient name Boii , situated in furthest Germany, were infected with the Bonosian f error, which error the defenders of the holy Church have branded the Bonosian heresy — which heresy, entangled in the reins of the ancient and crafty enemy, held our Lord Jesus Christ to be mere man without the Deity of the Father: for the confuting, nay for the cutting off of this wicked and insane doctrine, the venerable man Eustasius g the abbot, stirred up as he was by the divine spirit, came from the monastery of Luxeuil, situated in the forest of the Vosges, which that man of praiseworthy fame and powerful in holiness Columbanus h, coming as a pilgrim from Ireland, built with the utmost zeal and labor out of the munificence of king Childebert.
[3] A digression concerning St. Columbanus and the things done by him. But since we have made mention of so great a man as Columbanus, it is not necessary for our Work to weave his deeds, since they have been published, elaborated by that most eloquent man Jonas: how also amid the whirlwinds of the world, and under the rule of king Theoderic i and the cunning of queen Brunhilde who instigated it, he bore the snares of the abominable enemy; how also k by tyrannical rashness he was cast out by the Brethren and, having entered the borders of Italy, built with wondrous workmanship the monastery of Bobbio, by the permission and authority of Agilulf king of the Lombards, and founded a Rule of monks. The aforesaid Jonas pursues these things in his own style in the book which he published concerning his life and miracles. There are extant writings of the same father Columbanus to that most blessed man Gregory the Roman Pontiff, which he drew forth concerning the watchful care of shepherds l; who at that time was held so illustrious, and was endowed with such holiness, that even, by the favor of the Holy Spirit, the secrets of heaven lay open to him. The nine orders of angels also, after Paul the apostle, he in a wonderful manner treated of, either alone or almost alone. By whose teaching, by the grace of his eloquence and the fostering of penance the whole West is to this day enlightened: but the same venerable man also sent back honeyed writings to the aforesaid father.
[4] [St. Eustasius abbot of Luxeuil, returning from the preaching of the Gospel, the Saint] But to return to our purpose: the man of God Eustasius, having attacked the aforesaid people through the recesses of Germany — that the lamp of the Creator, set by no means under a bushel but upon a candlestick, might be made manifest to all, and that the talent given from above might not perish buried, but rather be laid open to all with doubled interest — having scraped away in part the path of error from that people m, cut it off with the Gospel sword (so far as the Lord Jesus Christ granted), preaching our Lord Jesus Christ: that as he had equality with God the Father in divinity, so also he took upon himself the humanity of a mother's body and our nature, which he himself had created, without sin, with no change diminishing the Deity, since he was always with the Father, so that he might in nothing lessen his own dignity: whence Christ has been called true God and true man. At length, returning from the Bavarians, that excellent man, after the toilsome path of Germany and Belgium, at length came to a certain most illustrious man, wealthy in resources and riches, renowned in fame according to the dignity of the world, and fit for the affairs of the court, named Gundoin n, who at that time was staying at an estate named Mosa o, so called from the river flowing down in that place, which river, taking its spring from the borders of Langres, after many windings and frequent circuits of the land, receiving into itself in part the streams of the most swift river Rhine, enters broadly the Barbarian ocean.
[5] Gundoin therefore, when he had seen the venerable man, received him as a most welcome gift. prodigiously from blindness and a flux of blood Further, as is wont to be, and as human affairs go, amid the wholesome words of exhortation the mind of the pious grew by the converse of faithful men. The same man of God began to inquire whether that illustrious man, sprung of Frankish birth, had any offspring: for the man of God perceived, as I suppose, that offspring was foreknown by God, as the outcome of the matter afterwards proved. Then the illustrious man Gundoin, with his wife Saretrudis [p], a woman of elegant form and noble, presented two young lads of good disposition, that they might receive the grace of a blessing; of whom the elder was Leuduin [q], surnamed Bodo, and the younger Fulculf, who himself also was called by another name Bodo. The man of God inquires again whether any offspring still remained. To him they confess that they have a full sister, older indeed in years, but long since deprived of her eyes. To them the man full of God says: Let her come, I pray, and be presented to our gaze: for he had felt, as I think, in the spirit, that health would be conferred upon her by the Lord . When therefore he had fulfilled a three days' fast on his own part, the man of God poured the oil of blessing upon the Girl's eyes. Wonderful to tell! Straightway the Girl, by the help of Christ's grace, obtained most perfectly her former health.
[6] And not undeservedly does almighty God so readily comply with the prayers of his servants, who have crucified their own wills for his sake. There follows next another splendid miracle. When the same Girl had for some while suffered a flux of blood and was bound fast by a most grievous distress of body from this cause, that excellent man Eustasius, as soon as he clearly learned of it, sought with poured-out prayers the divine and accustomed help. That eternal Sower of all things heard the prayers of his faithful servant, he who is wont to be at hand to his Saints who piously obey his precepts. Why say more? The Girl, having received soundness, was restored whole. Meanwhile, when she had come to the years of full age, her parents, when they had seen her growing up and adorned in character (for she was comely and lovely in countenance; but, as is wont to happen, after crises of affairs the mind of many grows lukewarm in prosperous successes), thinking of a succession of children, gave her in marriage, against the Girl's will, to a certain man powerful in high birth, named Ricchramnus [r]. He, having her by right of marriage scarcely two months, was taken away from human affairs and deprived of life.
[7] These things thus accomplished, Eustasius returned to Luxeuil [s]. Then he goes on to the Warasci, [After various apostolic labors, when St. Eustasius had died, St. Walbert succeeds him,] who inhabit part of the province of the Sequani and the streams of the river Doubs on either bank. These too, stained with the same error of Bonosius and Photinus, were now wasting away, grown old in it. Coming to them, the man of God, plying the Gospel plowshare and the cautery of the sacred Scriptures, though not without labor, lest the Lord's crop, with the clod growing hard and the tares choking it, should grow up into wild oats and darnel, recalled them to the bosom of holy Church; and they to this day, by the grace of divine inspiration, persevere in that same rule which they received from him. Thus blessed Eustasius, after many crises of affairs, after immense labors, after the dire storms of heretics and the frauds of the schismatic Agrestius, which are contained more fully in his own Deeds, as a good athlete mighty in the highest miracles, having fulfilled a blessed life, passed to the Lord; when he had governed the care of the Brethren, after the departure of his master, for not much less than three lustra [t]. In whose place Walbert of blessed memory was raised to the government of the Brethren, a man of praiseworthy fame among all and of exceptional sanctity, and not moderately learned in the ecclesiastical disciplines, distinguished in goodness and piety and charity, abounding in doctrine.
[8] [an excellent propagator of the monastic life. St. Salaberga, from her purpose of the monastic life] In his time throughout the provinces of the Gauls troops of monks and swarms of holy maidens began to sprout, not only through the fields, estates, villages and forts, but even through the waste of the desert, according to the Rule only of the blessed fathers Benedict and Columbanus: whereas before that time scarcely a few monasteries were to be found in those places. But to return to the thread of the history: that most prudent woman Salaberga, when she had now sat widowed for two years, though living under a lay habit, intent on vigils, fastings and almsgiving so far as her strength sufficed, rendered eagerly to God the things that are God's. And the teaching which she had received from blessed Eustasius she ruminated in her mind like a clean animal. While the matter stood thus, she resolved in her mind to seek a hiding-place by flight at the convent of holy virgins [v] which the venerable man Romaricus, magnificently converted from the palace, had built in the forest of the Vosges through the exhortation and comfort of blessed Eustasius: and she would have satisfied her vows, had not her sex been an impediment and had not royal obstacles hindered . At that same time Dagobert [u] governed the scepters of the Franks and the helm of the kingdom, a man keen in wit above all, and illustrious in his rule; and not only was he subject to himself by the right of fidelity, but was also to be feared by the fame of foreign and neighboring peoples.
[9] is drawn unwilling to a second marriage, But the aforesaid Gundoin, fearing lest on account of his Daughter he should incur the king's wrath and savagery, drew her back little by little from the path along which she had of her own accord resolved to go: for already her intention had come to the royal ears. There was living at last in those times at the court of the aforesaid prince a certain vigorous man, welcome in the royal councils and famous in reputation among his own, named Blandinus [w], who had received the surname Baso, who himself also was sprung from a notable stock of the Sicambri; and he presently took the aforesaid Salaberga into his marriage, not of her own will, since she had long ago vowed to bind herself to the divine precepts [x], and though her parents were unwilling, yet by royal command and for the sake of the procreation of children. Joined therefore to the said man, though under the law of wedlock, both nevertheless practiced Christian works, and most devoutly preserved the white robe of Baptism: for they were hospitable and given to almsgiving, and most of all, according to Paul that excellent preacher, to the household of the faith and to strangers, and they obeyed the servants of Christ with the utmost veneration, mindful of that precept of the Savior: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of mine, ye have done it unto me; and that of the blessed apostle Peter: Use hospitality one to another without grudging.
[10] [and for the obtaining of offspring makes a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Remigius] But when, by the Lord's favor, they were strong in these good morals and led their life after the Christian manner, and yet could obtain no offspring, that most Christian Woman, anxious at being deprived of so many privileges, applying to herself the faith of the holy women Anna and Elisabeth, who, keeping watch with vigils and prayers in the Lord's temple, after long barrenness [y] deserved to bring forth holy offspring, to the basilica of the blessed pontiff Remigius, who was illuminating the city of Reims and the land of Champagne with sacred and wondrous virtues,
she betook herself, and there, keeping watch with vigils and prayers, she vowed a vow, that if offspring were divinely granted her, she would dedicate it to the Lord. Nor was there delay; having returned home, that which she had faithfully and anxiously asked was conferred on her by the Lord; and she conceived and bore a daughter, on whom she bestowed the name Saretrudis from her grandmother's name. Again she brought forth another daughter, whom she called Ebana [z]. Then she bore a third daughter, and, when she had been regenerated by the grace of Baptism, called her Anstrudis, who in the course of time, with the whole company consenting, succeeded her in the care and government of the Sisters: and she up to this time, under Christ's favor, still survives with divine privileges. And she brought forth a fourth child, on whom likewise, when he had been consecrated by the priests with the grace of Baptism, they bestowed the name Eustasius, and he died within his boyish years. And she brought forth a fifth offspring of good disposition, named Baldoin [aa], whom too, like the former ones, she consecrated to almighty God. Finally this Handmaid of Christ so acted, and strove with every effort, to make her whole household — not for herself alone, but for her husband and her children together — a church of Christ.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. She is called in our manuscript and in du Chesne Saretruda. You have her namesake below, the daughter of St. Salaberga.
q. The Deeds of St. Leuduin you have laboriously discussed in our Work, vol. 3 of September, at the eleventh day, on which his memory occurs among the martyrologists. The discourse concerning him will return below at num. 17, as also concerning Fulculf at the last number but one of the Life.
r. The manuscript of the monastery of Acey has Ricranno, to whom, when our Saint married him, she counted about sixteen years, and therefore her first marriage is by my chronology to be bound to the year of Christ 626 or the following one.
s. Eustasius's preaching is here reported in an inverted order. Certainly in the Life of St. Eustasius and of St. Agilus he is said to have preached first to the Warasci and afterwards to the Boii. Concerning the Warasci Valesius disputes at greater length in his Notitia Galliarum p. 688. Where they were settled at that time our anonymous author clearly explains, namely on either bank of the river Doubs, otherwise Dubis, called by the natives le Doux, in Burgundy.
t. Hence
the chronology of the abbots of Luxeuil is entered upon. Eustasius was set by St. Columbanus over the monks of Luxeuil about the year 610, and presided over them about three lustra, and so almost to the year 625. To him succeeded Walbert or Waldebert: he, as Adso abbot of Montier-en-Der his biographer witnesses, when for the space of forty years … he had increased the place entrusted to him in goods and in the number of those serving God … passed to the Lord on the sixth of the Nones of May, namely in the year 665 by the reckoning.
v. It is today a famous place in Lorraine, and is called the mount of St. Romaricus, in French Remiremont.
u. That is, the first of that name, who in the year 622 was taken by his father Chlothar into partnership in the kingdom and given the scepter of Austrasia. His father being taken from Life in the year 628, Dagobert was acknowledged king in Neustria and Burgundy, and immediately set out into Burgundy, to come to the aid of the oppressed and of those suffering false accusation, as Aimoin writes in On the Deeds of the Kings of the Franks bk. 4 chap. 19. Probably while he was in Burgundy Salaberga's purpose became known to him, and then in the year 629 her marriage with Blandinus was entered upon at his urging.
w. Blandinus, who is here surnamed Baso, Bucelin in his Menology wrongly calls Bavo. The cult of the holy man is famous and ancient in the monastery of St. John of Laon. Probably he is the same who is honored at Meaux on the 1st of May, which may be investigated at that day in the Supplement of the Work.
x. There are those who hold Salaberga's parents and the Saint herself all but guilty of a violated vow. I should prefer to expound the vow here more mildly, as a desire, a wish or a purpose. Jonas says in the Life of St. Eustasius: And when he (Eustasius) had seen her (Salaberga), he inquired whether her youthful mind aspired to the worship of the divine fear; she says, as far as her tender age was able, that she is ready to obey the sacred proclamations. But no one will hammer out of that a vow of preserving chastity. That indeed the biographer of St. Agilus asserts in express words, both that it was asked by St. Agilus and that it was uttered by St. Salaberga; but he who ran into so many errors there does not make me believe him here.
y. Mabillon wrongly deduces from these words that St. Salaberga's barrenness was long, for these things are asserted not of her but of Anna and Elisabeth. I have granted her ten years, so that she was in about the thirtieth year of her age when she bore her firstborn Saretrudis.
z. Of her two elder daughters Saretrudis and Ebana I find no mention elsewhere. Concerning the rest see the preliminary Commentary num. 1.
aa. Concerning Baldoin the martyr and archdeacon of Laon Bollandus treated briefly at the eighth of January, and it will be possible to treat of him more fully in the Supplement of the Work. His slaying the writer of the Life of St. Anstrudis relates thus in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, Century 2 p. 977: But Balduin, most tenderly loved by his sister, in the simplicity of his heart, is guilefully summoned with the plague of envy to a hearing by the ministers of Satan in a certain estate of the province of Laon. He, taking with him two horsemen only, went straightway as the third for the cause of the hearing to his cruel enemies, the most wicked of all the men whom the earth bears, but was presently deceived under the false color of peace and run through with swords.
The manuscript has Ecclesiæ*
The manuscript, Boïas*
elsewhere Bonosiaco; supply: esset*
The manuscript: Regina Brunechilde instigante, versutas &c.*
The manuscript, with the punctuation set thus: Isdem præfatus Jonas librum &c.*
The manuscript, collatam*
lacking in the manuscript: frees. She is given, unwilling, to a husband, and is widowed of him after two months.*
The manuscript inserts trutinabat sæpiusque*
The manuscript, Irretissent*
CHAPTER II.
St. Salaberga withdraws from her husband with his consent, builds a notable monastery at Laon, and by pious admonitions draws her husband away from the perils of the world.
[ ] With her husband consenting, about to serve God alone Meanwhile, when the report of the surpassing holiness of blessed Walbert, of whom we made mention above, was sprouting excellently through almost all the borders of the Franks, and when the skill of his preaching was abundantly glowing from Christ the Lord, without whom nothing good is done, and he was welcome to all who worship God; and when monasteries of men and of women of Christ were being abundantly founded according to his rule: the blessed Salaberga, seeing that servant of Christ and illustrious soldier flourishing with so many examples and burning with heavenly virtues, and continually gathering everywhere the flocks of Christ, snatched as it were from the jaws of wolves, received him with exultation — summoning him rather often to her own house that she might receive the grace of his blessing — as though a divine gift granted her by the Lord, and desired to draw from his honeyed mouth wholesome words fitted to the healing of souls; and her mind burned most urgently that, the trappings of the world being despised and worldly pomps set aside, she might be able to ascend to the summit of the virtues and the height of holiness: concerning which summit of the virtues the Lord and Savior also speaks in the Gospel, saying: Every one that hath forsaken father, or mother, or houses, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess eternal life. And that other: I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it burn?*
[12] Why more? By God's authorship, committing all her hope after God to the blessed man, she begins to found a monastery: her husband being converted and her children consecrated to God, having received the garment of religion, and having taken counsel with blessed Walbert, with the connivance of her husband, she attempts to build a convent of maidens in the suburb of the city of Langres, upon her paternal inheritance or succession. Which she nobly enriched with the proper revenues of her estates and with the succession of her paternal inheritance, making Christ her heir: for the accomplishing of which work the venerable Walbert furnished and committed to it comfort, craftsmen and industrious men. Which place, though it overhung the borders of the Austrasians, was nevertheless close to Burgundy, being distant from the monastery of Luxeuil a little less than forty a miles; and there, when a hundred or more maidens had been gathered, both from the children of the nobility and from her own household, she dedicated it to Christ the Lord. But when now the greatest part of the fabric of the monastery had been built, the Handmaid of Christ, being prophetic, as one filled with the Spirit of God, began to weigh in her mind with the man of God that a convent of maidens was not safe in that place, and that the place had nothing of stability or of fortification. For although barbarism was far away, yet, since the boundaries of kings were intermingled on this side and that, there was an indication of danger for times to come — which danger we have since seen.
[13] At length lately a civil war between the kings of the Franks Theoderic b and Dagobert was waged about those borders: all the neighboring places there were laid waste; the fields, estates, houses, and (what is more grievous) the very bodies of the Saints were burned with fire. From which it plainly appears that she was imbued with the divine spirit, who long beforehand anticipated the crisis. and, before it was finished, she withdraws to Laon. Having therefore obtained counsel with the aforesaid abbot Walbert, who was endowed with a keen wit and vigor, and with a good nature in such things, and whom afterwards she had as the companion of her journey and the partner of her labor, she chooses a journey, with Christ as her leader, after the likeness of the most holy patriarch Abraham, who, having gone out from Mesopotamia of Syria, became a settler in the land of the Philistines, and by God's promise obtained it for his later posterity. Imitating whom, the Handmaid of God, leaving the soil of her fatherland and her paternal seats, choosing rather to be in want with Christ than to possess the gains of Mammon and to suffer so many perils, sets out with the greatest equipment, and with the souls committed to her by God, to the city of Laon c, with the wage of her life. Which city, although it can be beset by a siege from enemies, yet by the nature of the place and being situated on the top of a rock, has obtained a stout fortification, so that it cannot be broken by barbarians and lacks danger.
[13] A description of the city of Laon, where the Saint with her holy virgins For when in ancient time the Vandals d, Alans, Huns and the other peoples of Germany and Scythia had beset it in vain, with no art of siege-mounds threatening it, they were unable to take it either by the darts of slings, or by the points of hurled weapons, or by the thrusts of battering-rams, but frustrated in fruitless labor they withdrew powerless. For besides the circuit of the walls, which on the outside extends up the height of the hill, the circuit of the wall itself is on the inside level with the ground: whence it comes about that no art of siege-engines can there wear out the town. And on the other side natural rocks encircle it. The city within is full of wells. At the very exits of the gates also there flow perennial springs *, which are given for the use of men, cattle and beasts of burden for drinking. When therefore the venerable Woman with her holy followers had drawn near, as it were a ray of the sun to enlighten the city, Attilo e the bishop of that town goes to meet her with the highest favor, as though a divine gift and an angelic throng had come to him, and exulting he leads the holy handmaids of Christ into the city with a choir of singers, with psalmody and hymn-singing and the highest praises.
[15] [is received by the bishop with a solemn rite, and, when she had entered, the demons] But a miracle of hers, magnificent to tell, which was wrought that same night in that city, must not be passed over in silence. The aforesaid pontiff therefore commanded the servants and household entrusted to him to be at hand for preparing on the morrow the grace of refreshment for Christ's family. The ministers therefore, astonished, having quickly by night entered the gate of the town, saw diverse kinds of wild beasts and animals coming to meet them. For one saw a buffalo, another a stag, one a bear, another a boar, some wolves, very many nonetheless foxes, another meanwhile a wanton ass and a fierce lion, going out and fleeing together from the city, and other monstrous beasts, which it would be tedious to weave into this Work, lest the reader run into disgust. At which miracle all the ministers, struck with terror, marveled, since in that place such beasts had never before appeared. What else is given us to understand, but that the ancient enemy, not bearing the holiness and the vigor of the handmaids of God, fled away with his satellites?
[16] in monstrous shapes flee thence, who had long presided over the city, And not undeservedly does he deform himself into the monstrous figures of beasts and wild animals and bring forth various fictions, who, though created a good angel by the good Creator, swollen thereafter with pride, had long ago said in his heart: I will ascend above the stars of heaven, I will set my throne toward the North, and I will be like the Most High: now, cast out from the heavenly brightness and from the paradise of delights with his followers, in the form of worms, of shrews, or in any deformed shape he works the mystery of iniquity. Since indeed in earlier times — which very many still retain in memory f, and there are known to be survivors who saw this crime — in that same town, as is believed, the craft of the ancient serpent cruelly flourished; it mocked with cunning art the common country folk and dull-witted men; of whom it is written: Whose arts of harming are a thousand: for under the appearance of baptism he claimed them for himself as his own by idolatry. At length in time past they even called it an idol, beginning as it were from a game , and, with the devil raging in the midst of them, murders for the most part were perpetrated. This the most wicked one had done
demon by cunning craft, so that if anyone there had in any manner whatever maimed another's neighbor, he should be held guiltless of the shedding of blood by the kinsmen or those joined by affinity; namely, that the abominable custom might in the longer run increase the growth of malignity, and that the wicked robber might claim as his own the wretched city entangled in his reins.
[17] But the almighty and compassionate Lord of all things, She founds a huge monastery at Laon who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, looking mercifully upon the creature of his own right, has long since utterly emptied this sacrilege and abominable crime from that city by the roots. But now let us return again to the narrative we began. At length, having contemplated the condition of the place, and seeing it suitable and most welcome and a place without any crisis as to fortification, they began to lay the foundations of churches and houses g. Which being accomplished and prosperously carried out, there began to run together to the praises of almighty God and of our Lord Jesus Christ the offspring of nobles and of servants *. For what powerful man, or noble woman, who lived in those places, did not love blessed Salaberga from the heart? For she was always cheerful and of a placid countenance, conspicuous in charity and humility, most ready in almsgiving, and very devout about the worship of God. Why say more? Within the space of a short time there were heaped up in that place, or gathered into the monastery, more or less three hundred handmaids of Christ; and having arranged them by troops after the manner of the monks of Agaunum and of Habendum h, she laid down a rule.
[18] Day and night she commanded the canon to resound to almighty God in psalm-singing, [and instructs the nuns with most wholesome precepts, and draws her husband to the monastic life.] and, according to that excellent preacher Paul, to pray without ceasing. Which institution is to this day, under Christ's favor, kept in the same convent. For in that same place there burned an intent love and desire of singing the chant: for indeed she thirstily gathered many of the nobility, as we said above, to be collected for the service of Christ. For among the other women of the noble Sicambri, Odila, powerful in nobility and in a nature of good wit, who herself also had long before received from the venerable Walbert the notable and wholesome antidote of Christian vigor, having taken counsel with the royal and illustrious man Bodo i, whom we called above Leuduin, who at that time was industrious and powerful, they were converted to the Lord, the trappings of the world being set aside. Their goods were conferred upon monasteries *, and, holding the same path after blessed Salaberga, they hastened to Laon. Bodo, his hair being cut, fulfilled the office of a monk so far as circumstances allowed, and not long after k, having obtained the bishopric of the town of Toul, paid the debt of nature. The venerable Odila also, having received Christ's mark, joining herself to the choir of holy virgins, and living a blessed life under the tenor of obedience, rendered up her spirit, to whom all things are owed.
ANNOTATIONS.
where it is read: St. Victorius (in a council of 60 bishops before king Sigismund the Pious) … says … It seems to me right that, according to the fullest devotion of the lord king and the institutions of psalm-singing, there be made nine rules, … so that, succeeding one another in the canonical Offices, that is, at Nocturns, Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None and Vespers, they may in this place serve the Lord unceasingly by day and by night. Another charter you have in the Posthumous Glory of St. Maurice and his Companions §2.
The manuscript inserts virginum*.
The manuscript: qui usui hominum pecorum, ac jumentorum potum dant.*
in the manuscript consecratio* is inserted
elsewhere in the manuscript dolo*
The manuscript, servitiumque*
read contulerunt, or rebus suis … collatis*
CHAPTER III.
The Saint's death: miracles wrought before and after it.
[ ] [St. Salaberga shines with very many miracles, and heals her sister of the falling sickness:] When therefore blessed Salaberga, dwelling in holiness, with an adorned countenance, as is related of blessed Hilary, was piously leading her life with the Sisters, a certain nun in that same convent, seized with the madness of the falling sickness, while she had begun to sing the course in the church, fell to the ground before them all with unbridled mind; whom presently the blessed and venerable Mother, having taken her familiarly to herself and asking the Lord for her with diligent prayer, cleansed of that same plague by the help of divine grace, and bade her go freely and unharmed to the service of Christ. But very many and most famous are the things which are inserted by the pen into the praises a and memory of the venerable Mother, which shall afterwards be fitted to their own places. But at a certain time, while she was awaiting the coming of the blessed man Walbert, and there was a lack of an abundance of wine, she gave orders that there be made the broth of wheat or of barley which they call Beer, and which is made by human art, and which most of the Western nations use: and she ordered it to be put into the vessel which in the common tongue they call a Tun b. But when the vessel was not filled to the full with the drinkable liquor, and the handmaid of Christ, to whom for obedience's sake in that year, according to the tenor of the Rule, the turn had fallen of keeping the cellar and serving the sisters, came with humility to the venerable Mother, and said:
[20] Lady Mother, she says, what shall we do, since the vessel is not full of the strong drink, and the air is hot; she prodigiously increases the beer. if the holy man the abbot shall weave delays in coming, I fear lest the drinkable liquor turn sour into the sharpness of vinegar. To whom she says: Go, and pour into the vessel whatever has been made afterwards of the liquor. But she, not doubting, going with a swift course to fulfil the holy Mother's command, found the vessel full, which a little before she had left half empty; and thus it was brought about by the mercy of almighty God that, while the Mother's faith is armed, the vigor of obedience is strengthened in the disciple, and the divine power is straightway laid open, and the drink, which was scanty, is increased into more; and the handmaid of God, returning with alacrity and humility, related the miracle to the holy Mother. She gave thanks to the supreme Creator of all things, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is wont to be quickly at hand to those who serve him in truth. Thereafter another miracle was wrought. A certain Sister, coming to wash the soil of the garments, as is the custom, to the cell of the workroom in which this was wont to be done, took the little vessel which necessity required to be at hand in such matters, carrying with her also a little wood.
[21] But since the chain on which the vessel hung was slender and rather short and did not come near the fire, [The beams of the cell bend of their own accord, so that the cauldrons hanging from them] the handmaid of God, finding another chain by her diligence, knotted them together: and behold, another companion of hers, coming with another little vessel made of the metal of bronze, desired a like work, and humbly beseeching her companion said: Lend me, sister, one chain, that we both may work the more swiftly. Her companion says: For charity's sake I will lend it thee; but go thou and bring as much wood as thou canst, since the little vessels are hung high, that we may be able to finish what necessity compels. And when she had gone away, she in no wise found what she had asked for. Then both the handmaids of Christ began to be anxious; yet what they should do, they did not know. But behold, suddenly with a great sound the cell of the workroom, as though about to fall, bending itself, is brought down toward the fire c. Then with a hurried course the handmaids of Christ and all the Sisters come to look at it, and inquire what the crash and din might be. But seeing the miracle, they were amazed at what had happened.
[22] Then the venerable Mother orders that the man of God Italus, priest and provost of the same convent, should approach to contemplate this kind of miracle. may be let down nearer to the fire beneath. But when the man of God had come, seeing the cell not shattered by the crashes but remaining unhurt, he rendered abundant thanks to almighty God; weighing the merit of the Mother, who had disciples so imbued and devout, that even the elements served their fervent charity. At length on a certain day, when in the summer season she was walking outside the wall of the town, but within the cloisters of the convent, she saw the monk Lanfred, her gardener d, in the circuit of the garden searching out I know not what for the sake of the vegetables and cutting away the harmful weeds; and to him, in a hissing and silent voice, which no one of the Sisters could at all hear, she says: Bring us, brother Lanfred, some of the lettuces. This she uttered rather by nodding than by speaking. These things the aforesaid brother, who still survives, was wont to relate. Wonderful to tell! the voice, which had been uttered with a small breath, and with no one else hearing it, came so fully into the Brother's ears, as though it had been spoken in the Brother's own presence. But the space between them was about four stadia, or more than that.
[23] There happened also another kind of miracle. When at a certain time she was serving the Sisters in the office of the kitchen, as was the custom, during her week, and small fish or any other things fit for monastic uses were by no means at hand, Basinus archdeacon of that same city Her voice is extended to an unwonted distance. The want was reclining in his house; and a voice sounded in his ears, saying: Thou knowest that the Abbess is performing the burden of the kitchen for the Sisters; thou oughtest to hasten as quickly as possible to visit her. But he, holding it too lightly, neglected it. And when he had been admonished three times, moreover blows also are threatened him. What should he do? What should he carry to so great a Mother? He had by no means the wherewithal for such a work. At last at length, going out of his house, he found at the doorway a man carrying a fish of wonderful size: which, believing it to have been brought by a divine sign, having only paid the price, he carried to the blessed Mother; from which she, setting a dish before the Sisters, refreshed them all to satiety. Which let no one believe was done by contrivance, but rather prepared by a divine sign for the supplying of her refreshment.
[24] [of the convent is divinely revealed to the archdeacon. The Saint is afflicted with sicknesses.] But how much, and for how long a time in this life almighty God loved her, nay rather how he purified her as fine gold, is not to be passed over in silence. For at a certain time, the vein of fevers being kindled, she bore how grievous a distress of body, so that she lost the faculty of speech: but when, with Christ presiding, she had better recovered, and was asked, nay urgently begged by the Sisters what such a seizure had been, she answered with a fervent spirit: O most sweet Sisters, why do you wish to search out the cause of the matter? For I was being oppressed by exceedingly savage and foul spirits : but when I was better recovering, two wings coming down from above encircled me, whose appearance was fairer than the purest gold: for their tips too were felt to be sharper than a two-edged sword. But when I was walled about by these, the most foul spirits fled. But what else is given us to understand by this, save that almighty God was purifying his own creature in this present life only, and, when she was strengthened by the protection of his right hand, would gather her with the Saints? For wings, in the holy Scriptures, are understood as the heavenly powers. Recovering in body, but stronger in mind, she lived a year and nine months not full, the temptation being ended.
[25] Her various virtues, and among these For who could relate with worthy praises the shrewdness of her holiness and sagacity, whose charity and humility surpassed those of all her subjects, with an affection of wondrous sweetness and goodness? For she was cheerful in countenance and lovely in aspect, brisk in conversation, moderate in word, prudent in counsel; excellent in ordering the affairs of the convent, sagacious in wit, given to the love of almsgiving, and not slow in hospitality. In the regular rule she was discerning, imitating the life of the holy women Melania and Paula; of whom Melania, as blessed Jerome says, the noblest of Roman women and daughter of Marcellinus, once consul, sailed to Jerusalem: where she was so distinguished in humility and charity that she received the name of Thecla: but Paula, having left her city patrimony, sprung of Greek stock, seeking the fields of Bethlehem, and passing her life in the highest goodness and humility, rendered up her holy spirit to the Lord. And to seek yet higher examples, blessed Salaberga imitated the empress Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, as the Ecclesiastical history relates, and, the members of the flesh being mortified and the pomps of the world set aside, served God with daily observances. For whatever there was of usefulness in the convent, and whatever cleaning had to be done, she assigned to herself.
[26] her perfect humility is praised. She is enlightened by visions But she served in the kitchen, and in the other tasks which are wont to be carried out in monastic affairs, in her turn during her own weeks. But while, with Christ presiding, she was doing these and other like good things, at a certain time she saw in the dwelling which she was wont to frequent a tabernacle of wondrous brightness and splendor descending from the pole of heaven, which appeared spacious below and steep above, into which she was received; and a bird of wondrous whiteness and shining with exceeding splendor seized her, set as she was in ecstasy, nay carried her over across a certain huge river, and set her down in exceedingly pleasant meadows, where diverse kinds of flowers and immense kinds of perfumes were fragrant: and among the shining lilies and the flowers of red roses she saw immense throngs of infants of either sex, exulting in snowy robes and with laurelled heads; and among them the little boy Magobert e also was present. Seeing whom, she says: Dost thou know me, mother? She says: I do not know. The boy answered: I am Magobert the son of Amiliana, whom thou didst send on before thee, and I am now in that brightness which thou beholdest.
[27] She also saw the venerable man Ansericus f the pontiff coming to meet her: and is forewarned also a second time of her death. to whom he says: Dost thou know me? But she confesses that she does not know. I am Ansericus bishop of Soissons, whom thou hast seen rather often summoned to thy house: come, and I will show thee the doors of paradise, and I will show thee the city of God most high and the twelve seats of the Apostles glowing with gold and gems. And he also says to her: Behold for thee
a place has been prepared, but because blessed Mary, at the prayers of the Sisters, since thou art still necessary to them, has besought her Son that thou mayest return thither the more quickly from on high, to possess the rewards conferred on thee by the Lord. Meanwhile that bird again seized her and, when her breath had been recovered in its mouth, sent her back from on high. Then, while on a certain night she was taking sleep, in the likeness of the venerable man Walbert g, as an angel of the Lord, he appeared to her for the third time, and drew away her girdle from her loins and carried it off with him, which girdle appeared no more, signifying, as I suppose, that in her posterity honor should increase to those who succeeded her. He, as she herself was wont to relate, shone with exceeding whiteness, and addresses the Woman with this wondrous word.
[28] O most sweet Daughter, prepare thyself to receive the prize, and await thy departure, she falls sick and on the hundredth day after since I also desire to receive a prize from thy victory, because the hundredth day from this day shall be the day of thy calling, that thou mayest lay up in the barn of thy Lord, with multiplied interest, the fruit of thy labor which thou hast sought with great sweat. Hearing these things, she summoned one of the sisters familiar to her and laid open to her the force of the dream and the tenor of the matter, and put off telling it to the others. But the angel of the Lord commanded her that on each day and night within that number of a hundred she should complete the Psalter. From that day therefore she began to give herself to vigils, fastings, psalms and prayers more than was her wont, the more confident she was of the promise, so much the more brisk in her service. But before the twentieth day of her calling, being touched with pain of the feet, she took to her bed, as is written of the perfect man: The almond tree shall flourish, the locust shall be fattened, the caper shall be scattered, because man shall go into the house of his eternity. At the last, the Office being completed, having called together the companies of the Sisters, she addresses them with this word: Continue in the service of almighty God, O handmaids of Christ, because not he who has begun, according to the divine oracle, but he who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.*
[29] Meanwhile, as is wont to happen in the abundance of possessions, that discord is generated even among kinsfolk, she passes to the blessed on the twenty-second of September. her brother Bodo h was retaining by unlawful usurpation certain estates which he had by a series of charters granted to that same convent. But learning of his Sister's sickness, while she, anxious about this matter, was entreating the Lord, he came to her with the utmost haste, and presently, confirming the charters between them, he brought the whole to ratification once for all. But when she had perceived that she was about to pass from the body, bidding farewell to the Sisters she asked the priest Italus to perform the office for her (as is the custom). And while begging this, she sent forth her holy spirit, being gathered to the companies of the Saints, about to receive double in eternal glory from Christ, to whom be power and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. The aforesaid Handmaid of Christ died on the tenth of the Kalends of October, on which day the holy passion of the Thebans, under their leader Maurice, is celebrated at Agaunum. Her relics also are laid up in the same place i; at whose burial-place bright virtues were made manifest after her death.
ANNOTATIONS.
The manuscript, sororibus*
The manuscript, a dorso meo venientes girabant me*
Correct to uni* &c.