Florentinus and Hilary and Aphrodisius

ON SS. FLORENTINUS AND HILARY AND APHRODISIUS, MARTYRS AMONG THE ÆDUI IN GAUL,

AT PSEUDUNUM AMONG THE ÆDUI.

Perhaps in the IIIrd century.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Florentinus, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Hilary, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Aphrodisius, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

BY J. P.

§ I. Their memory in the Fasti; the arena of the martyrdom.

[ ] Whatsoever concerns these holy Martyrs (understand always Florentinus and Hilary, for why I have joined Aphrodisius to them I shall note below) The name of Florentinus alone in the Hieronymian Martyrologies; — if you except the death undergone for the faith and their cultus — is either controverted or entangled with difficulties, some things, however, with greater difficulties than others. The first controversy regards the place of the martyrdom, and it has arisen from the diversity with which that place has been expressed in some copies of the Martyrologies and taken by writers of later times. But after the codices of better note, both of those and of other Martyrologies, had been dug out of the darkness, and had been discussed by the learned and collated among themselves, that one opinion about the place of the martyrdom which before was the most common so fell away that it has retained very few followers. It will be useful, before we set out the matter more fully, to have transferred hither what is read of the Saints in the chief Martyrologies. Among the Hieronymian ones in Florentini, the more ancient has thus: In the territory of the city of Ædua, the birthday of saint Florentinus; the Antwerp one: In the city of Ædua, the birthday of Florentianus; the Corbie one: In the territory of the city of Augustodunum, of saint Florentinus, Silvanus, Firmus. With this latter agrees that which Achery also inserted from a Corbie codex in tom. 4 of the Spicilegium, and which he marked with the name of the most ancient Hieronymian. Among the abridged ones likewise attributed to Jerome, in our tom. VII of June the Augsburg one on this day has only the bare name of Florentinus; but the Labbean adds the place thus: Ed. of Florentinus; while the Gellone one, in Achery tom. 13 of the Spicilegium, expresses the name of the place entire: Among the Ædui, of Florentinus.

[2] of neither in the pure Ado, The memory of Florentinus alone likewise is celebrated in the Ado published by Mosander, yet in such a way that the announcement is marked with an asterisk as doubtful, or as not Ado's own; because, as may be gathered from Mosander's admonition to the reader, it was found in only one of the four Manuscript codices which he used. Our Rosweyde followed Mosander, and cast the announcement, as not proper to Ado, into the Appendix; and it is this: On the same day, of saint Florentinus the martyr. Sollerius in his Usuard approved the judgment of Mosander and Rosweyde; Mabillon, on the contrary, in part 2 of the 4th Century of the Acts of the Order of St. Benedict, page 493, tried to claim for Ado not only Florentinus but Hilary also. To that end he produced the following announcement out of his very old Germain codex: In the territory of Autun, the passion of the holy martyrs Florentinus and Hilary, who, while at the fort of Pseudunum they gave their labour to Christianity and devoted themselves to fastings and prayers and almsdeeds, were at length seized by the command of Croccus king of the Vandals, who were laying Gaul waste, and for the faith of Christ, by the bruising of the mouth, by the breaking of the teeth, and by the tearing out of their tongues, are punished with a capital sentence on the V Kal. of October. But Sollerius, in the Preface to Usuard, chapter 3 article 2, contends that Mabillon's codex is not truly and purely Adonian, since it differs very widely from the printed and Manuscript copies of the Adonian Martyrology. Meanwhile Dominic Georgi has come over to Mabillon's opinion in the Rosweydian Ado lately reprinted and illustrated with annotations, where at the XXVII day of September he has subjoined to the text, from three Adonian codices, the same announcement which Mabillon had given: but although we would not deny that these and like codices are commendable for their antiquity, we have not hitherto been persuaded that they are equal in purity and authority to the codices of Mosander and Rosweyde.

[3] As regards Usuard, the commemoration of both Saints is so general in all the copies Of Florentinus and Hilary it is read in Usuard and others. that no one can rightly doubt but that it is his own. The genuine and pure reading is conceived in these words in Sollerius: At the fort of Pseudunum, of saint Florentinus, who together with blessed Hilary, after the cutting off of his tongue, was ordered to be struck with the sword. The Auxerre Martyrology also announces both, in Martène tom. 6 of the Most Ample Collection, in this phrase: In the territory of Autun, the passion of SS. Florentinus and Hilary. Again Florentinus alone, and that with the name corrupted, is set down by the Franco-Gallic Hagiology: At the fort of Seudunum, of saint Florentius the martyr. I pass over the more recent Fasti, in which Hilary is constantly joined to Florentinus, and whose announcements have commonly flowed from the copies of Usuard, and hence the controversy mentioned above about the place of the martyrdom, to which I return. Usuard, as Sollerius shows at this day from the best codices — the Prato, the Hérin, the Tournai, Rosweyde's and Greven's — had written At the fort of Pseudunum: but since he had not expressed the region or province, later men, to whom the place was unknown, and who had not at hand the Hieronymian or other ancient monuments from which they might at least broadly discover its situation, wrote first Seudunum, then Sedunum, and so little by little the opinion prevailed that Sedunum was designated — in French Sion, in German Sitten — the chief city of the Valais.

[4] The first, unless I am mistaken, to enter on this path was Sigebert of Gembloux, That they did not suffer at Sion in the Valais, an author of the XIth and 12th century, in his Chronicle published in print by Miræus, where at the year 411 he calls our Saints men of Sion; although perhaps an appellation of this kind ought to be ascribed to the copyists. The same was held by Peter de Natalibus in the Catalogue of the Saints of the edition of the year 1493, by Muneratus, Belinus and Molanus in their editions of the Usuardine Martyrology, by Galesinius and others, who attribute the Saints to Sedunum or the Fort of Sedunum, and whose reading the Most Eminent Baronius also retained in today's Roman: At Sion in Gaul, of saint Florentinus the martyr, who together with blessed Hilary, after the cutting off of his tongue, was ordered to be struck with the sword. But Saussay, to remove all doubt, added the name of the river on which the Sedunum of the Valais is situated: On the same day, at the Fort of Seduno on the Rhone, etc. This last I observe because, although the authors here reckoned up set the arena of the martyrdom at Sedunum, it does not thence become certain whether they all understood the Sedunum of the Valais, or rather a place of Gaul different from it. We have an example in Maurolico, who indeed wrote Sedunum with the others, and yet did not mean the city of the Valais to be designated, as appears from his announcement of today: At the Fort of Seduno near Autun, of the saints Florentius and Hilary, etc. A like doubt cannot be formed about the writers of Switzerland or of the Valais, namely Francis Guillimann, book 4 chapter 3 On the Affairs of the Swiss, Henry Murer in Holy Helvetia page 182, and Sebastian Briguet in Christian Valais, sect. 2 chapter 2: for they, which is the less to be wondered at, since about a matter

of their own is being handled, place the arena of the martyrdom distinctly and confidently at Sion in the Valais. But they bring forward nothing which, antiquity being regarded, can even be compared with the ancient Martyrologies hitherto recited, in almost all of which the Saints are commemorated among the Ædui or in the territory of Autun, which forms part of the duchy of Burgundy.

[5] but at Pseudunum among the Ædui, Mabillon, who has laboriously handled this matter in Cent. 4, part 2 of the Acts of the Order of St. Benedict, page 492 and following, joins to the Martyrologies the Acts of the martyrdom to be mentioned below, in which it is read that Florentinus, while the Vandals were breaking into the Gauls, dwelt within the bounds of the Ædui, not far from the tract or district of Duesmois; and after a few words it goes on thus: At length (the barbarian nation) came with Croccus their king to the fort of Pseudunum, where B. Florentinus, having in his company Hilary, a man of righteousness, was then giving his labour to virtues. Finally it is narrated at length in what fashion, being ordered to be set before that king, he suffered with his companion Hilary and was buried in the same fort. Hence Mabillon concludes: And so the place where they suffered death was within the bounds of the Ædui, and indeed not far from the district of Duesmois, commonly le Duesmois, which borders on that of Alise. Lastly, the name of the place was Pseudunum, not Sedunum, as has hitherto been believed. The same author, after a diligent inquiry into the situation of the place, says that he does not doubt that Pseudunum is a village of the diocese of Autun which is to this day called by the natives Semont. I shall bring forward his reasons below also, and shall set out what is objected to them.

[6] is shown, and the opposite For the rest, the critics who after Mabillon discussed this question — Ruinart in the History of the Vandal Persecution, page 409 and following, Sollerius in his Observation on the XXVII day of September in the Usuardine edition, and others — judged the authority for setting the arena of the martyrdom in the territory of Autun so weighty and certain that I have not found any who attempted to assail that opinion or to defend the opposite, except one, Sebastian Briguet in Christian Valais, published in print at Sion in the year 1744. He, therefore, in Section 2, chapter 2, first affirms, according to the opinion formerly more common, that the Saints suffered at Sion in the Valais; then he observes the following: There are those who say that Florentinus with Hilary also dwelt for no brief sojourn in the city of Burgundy called Pseudin, now called Semont, of the diocese of Autun; and that they were taken by the barbarians laying waste Celtic Gaul, and fell for the confession of Jesus Christ on the XXVII of September, whose relics were translated in the year DCCCLV to the abbey of Aine in the diocese of Lyons. Meanwhile the perpetual tradition of the men of the Valais and the sacred Annals hold that the place of their bloody death was at St. Peter's of Clages (so in all likelihood he indicates the place of the city of Sion where a church sacred to St. Peter the apostle still stands). The said author cautiously keeps silence as to who those adversaries of his are, and on what authority, and how great, their assertion rests.

[7] opinion's To this, forsooth, are they reduced who let themselves be carried away by too great a love of their country. While there is nothing which can be set against the most solid testimonies and arguments, these they neglect and pass over as of lighter moment, and presently leap across to their own traditions, born not seldom of mere conjectures, sometimes even of errors; and finally they want the matter settled, provided they can cite private Annals whose age is not known nor their authority, and which are often propped on no other foundation than those very traditions. Yet lest the said Briguet should seem destitute of all external authority, he presently subjoined to the words cited these: Ado in the Martyrol.; Ribadeneira tom. 2 in the Life of St. Innocent, 29 July; Jac. Gaultier Cent. V, 400 col. 1 page 380; likewise column of Emperors page 381. Ado names Florentius: V Kal. Oct. at the Fort of Sedunum, in Guillimann bk. 4 ch. 3; Casp. Lang. bk. 1 ch. 2 a. 9, Petr. de Natal., etc. So he; but by no means things fit to confirm the tradition, or to bring weight to the Annals alleged in the preceding num.

[8] For the genuine Martyrology of Ado, as was said at num. 2, arguments does not have our Saints. Yet let us grant that the announcement is proper to Ado, whether the shorter one, which Mosander and Rosweyde rejected, or the longer, which Mabillon and Georgi produced as truly Adonian; Briguet will have recourse to it in vain: since the shorter expresses neither the place nor the region of the martyrdom, while the longer assigns the Fort of Pseudunum in the territory of Autun. Nay, he says, I mean the Ado cited by Guillimann, where it is read that Florentius with Hilary was crowned with martyrdom at the Fort of Sedunum. I answer: If there were added in the Valais or something like it, then perhaps it would be worth while to inquire into the value of the codex used by Guillimann, and to discuss whether that one is to be preferred to so many other copies of the ancient Fasti hitherto produced: but since nothing of the kind is added, that codex, faulty even in the name of St. Florentinus, can at most be referred to the class of those Fasti in which Sedunum is read with no region added, and which are to be corrected and explained according to more ancient and better monuments. Peter de Natalibus's Catalogue of the Saints, here called in aid by Briguet, is to be referred to the same class, since no region is designated. And beyond doubt the same is to be determined about the Work of the other author, unknown to us.

[9] But to what end the same Briguet reckons Ribadeneira and Gaultier or Gaulterius among the patrons of his opinion rather than others, I am plainly ignorant. are refuted. For while I thought that they too, though more recent, should be consulted, so that if perchance they had produced some ancient instrument I might examine it, I went to the Lives of the Saints published by Ribadeneira both in Spanish and in Latin, and in both, not at the XXIX but at the XXVIII of July, I turned over the Life of St. Innocent, Pope and martyr; but I found not one word in which the Valais, Sedunum, Octodurum, Florentinus or Hilary is mentioned. The same happened when I consulted Gaulterius at pages 380 and 381, where he handles things indeed done in the 5th century, but wholly diverse from the present matter. I suspected at first that this perhaps arose from my having a different edition of the Work, and therefore, in going over the same century, I lighted on pages 356 and 357, which I judged to be those assigned by Briguet: because on page 356 col. 1, among the Supreme Pontiffs, the deeds of St. Innocent the Pope are related, and on page 357 col. 1, among the emperors, the deeds of the emperor Honorius, in whose reigns, according to many, SS. Florentinus and Hilary underwent martyrdom: but neither here is there any memory of those Saints or of the arena of the martyrdom. And so, since nothing anywhere shows itself which patronizes the tradition and Annals of the men of Sion, or makes doubtful the opinion for the Ædui or the territory of Autun, it remains that we set forth in what part of the said territory the French writers believe Pseudunum to be situated.

[10] Mabillon, in Cent. 4 part 2 of the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, judges the place to have been certainly detected by him: Mabillon's opinion about the situation of the place Many letters, he says at page 493, having been sent to and fro on this matter, I at length consulted the venerable man D. C. Broccot, rector of the church of Quemigny in the district of Duesmois and archpriest of the same district: from whose letters I at last understood that in the parish church of the village which in the vernacular is called Bremur there is preserved the head of St. Florentinus the martyr, who by tradition of the natives is held to have been put to martyrdom about one stone's distance hence; namely in that place where even today an aged and dry oak is shown in place of a sign. Further, with a narrow valley, which the Seine waters, lying between, there is situated a village set upon the opposite hill, by name Semont, by which name I in no wise doubt that Pseudunum is signified. For that place, as also the village of Bremur, stands in the diocese of Autun, and indeed in the district of Duesmois: and out of Pseudunum was made first the name Pseumont (for dunum among the old Gauls signified a mountain), then Seumont and at last Semont. This place, once marked with the name of a fort (which the ancients attributed only to cities and fortified towns), is now reduced to a tiny hamlet which scarcely holds twice twelve cottages, and depends on the neighbouring parish of the little town of St. Marc. Lastly, in the plain lying below, watered by the waters of the Seine, midway between Pseudunum and Bremur, that aged oak mentioned above still survives, which retains the name of St. Florentinus from the place of his passion. Thither for religion's sake the inhabitants of Bremur are wont to carry the head of St. Florentinus to obtain rain.

[11] the opinion This opinion of Mabillon's Castellanus had at first adopted with others in the Universal Martyrology at the XXVII day of September, noting that our Saints suffered, in French, at Semont; and in Latin in the margin, at Pseudunum. But he afterwards deserted it in the Corollary to the same day, page 739, where he notes that after the word Pseuduni is to be added or Seuduni: as is read in the Manuscript Martyrology of Nevelo of Corbie. Then he signifies that by that name is to be understood a place indeed of the same diocese of Autun, but different from Semont, and which in French is called Suin; For this place, he says, situated in the tract of Quadrigella or Cadrella (en Charollois) is called Seudunum in the Records, as we see in the Manuscript Treatise of the Priories subject to the abbey of St. Germain of Auxerre. So he. Indeed his opinion pleases me the more in so far as in it there is no need to have recourse to Mabillon's analogy, by which, through a conjecture fetched from very far off, Semont was made out of Pseudunum because dunum among the old Gauls signified a mountain; whereas, on the same Castellanus's witness, Semont is a place not, as Mabillon asserted, set upon a hill, but situated on the level on the bank of the Seine.

[12] Castellanus's opinion Further, Castellanus's opinion is greatly favoured by our Manuscript codex on the bishops of Auxerre and the abbots of St. Germain, which we are wont to cite under the name of D. Georges Viole, a religious of the said abbey in the century just past, and in which the author or collector also treats of the Priories subject to the same abbey, and particularly and at length of the Priory of St. Florentinus on the river Armançon in the diocese of Sens. And he promises to give the foundation of this Priory from two Manuscripts of the same, namely the Legendary and the Chartulary: then he says that to avoid confusion it must be observed that, besides the Saints who go in other provinces under the name of Florentinus, there are two notable Martyrs in Burgundy, where he writes, of whom the one — more commonly, however, called Florentius — is announced in the sacred Fasti on the XXVII day of October, and the other on the XXVII of September; and this last he asserts to have been beheaded with his companion Hilary, by command of Croscus king of the Vandals, en Suin a Charolois (it should be read a Suin en Charolois) in the diocese of Autun: which is, as abundantly appears, Castellanus's very opinion.

[13] But I have said only that our codex greatly favours Castellanus's opinion, is preferred, because what Castellanus said, that Suin is in Latin called Seudunum, I do not find in our codex, although I do not doubt that he appeals to its autograph when he adds: As we see in the Manuscript Treatise of the Priories subject

to the abbey of St. Germain of Auxerre. For at the front of our said codex the following is noted: The autograph of this Manuscript Claudius Castellanus transmitted to us from Paris in the year MDCCIX, and after it had been transcribed we sent it back to him. Nor do I doubt that Castellanus's assertion about the Latin naming of the place Suin is in itself true, and drawn either from other documents or from those very records which he cites at the same time, perhaps not inserted in our transcript. The reason is that, unless I am much mistaken, the present Suin was also once called in French Seduno. Certainly in the Index of benefices (le Pouillé) of the diocese of Autun, where the benefices of the archpresbyterate of Cadrella are treated of, I read this: Cure of saint Bonit of Joux; cure of Seduno: but Suin, which nevertheless is a parish of the said archpresbyterate, and in the geographical map of Guillaume de l'Isle is marked about one Burgundian mile from the parish of St. Bonit, is not reckoned in the said Index; so that I believe Suin and Seduno to be one and the same place — nay, more likely the same which in the more ancient Martyrologies is rightly written Pseudunum, and which, one letter and another being gradually taken away, began to be called Seudunum and Sedunum, as was said above. Hence I judge Castellanus's admonition superfluous, when he says that to the word Pseuduni in his Martyrology should be added or Seuduni: since Pseudunum, wherever after all it is situated in the territory of Autun, is the true name of the arena.

[14] But since we judge Castellanus's opinion, as regards the place itself, to be preferred, and to Mabillon's it is fair that we should briefly answer the reasons which Mabillon brought forward for his own. That the analogy devised by Mabillon between the French name Semont and the Latin Pseudunum displeases us as well as Castellanus, we have already sufficiently indicated. As regards the relics of St. Florentinus preserved in the village of Bremur: hence, unless something else be added, it does not follow that the Saints suffered there or not far thence: since, as Castellanus notes, they could have been carried thither as well as to so many other places, to be mentioned hereafter, where the relics of the same Saint are honoured, and yet the arena of the martyrdom is not there set. Nay, you say, there is added the tradition of the natives, and the tree between Semont and Bremur called until now the Oak of St. Florentinus; because he is believed to have been crowned with martyrdom there. I answer first, by setting against the tradition the words cited at num. 12 out of the Auxerre Manuscript codex, which certainly involve and indicate a tradition opposed to it. Which is the more ancient and the truer? If the naming of the tree in some way favours the one, the name of the place, Seudunum or rather Pseudunum, according to what was said before, more strongly supports the other. Secondly, let us grant for the moment that Semont too was once called in Latin Pseudunum: not even then will the Mabillonian tradition agree in every part with the Martyrologies and the Acts: since these set the arena in the fort of Pseudunum, while the tradition sets it at a tree midway between Semont and Bremur. To the naming of the tree Castellanus replies that it could arise from this, that when the relics of St. Florentinus were first carried to Bremur, their bearer rested beneath its shade: I do not deny it. Yet, if he had added that the tree is perhaps so called because, when the Saint's relics are carried abroad to obtain rain, the inhabitants are not wont to go beyond it, so that from that custom it is held as the limit of the supplication, and thence arose the opinion about the arena of the martyrdom, the conjecture would please me no less.

[15] reasons, drawn from monuments There remains one argument, taken by Mabillon from the Acts of our Saints, to which I wonder that no answer was made by Castellanus. Its force consists in this, that in the Acts, as the same Mabillon reads, the district of Duesmois is named, in which Semont is situated. The Mabillonian text is this: When the madness and frenzy of the Vandal persecution was most cruelly pressing the peoples round about, and … had by its ravaging afflicted the greatest part of the world; at that time blessed Florentinus, still exercising warfare for the world, dwelt within the bounds of the Ædui, not far the tract [or] district of Duesmois. I answer first that the Acts are corrupted by copyists in so many places that even if the biographer's authority were greater than I judge should be attributed to him, I should still doubt whether we ought rather to stand by them than by our Auxerre Manuscript codex, in which the Saints are said to have suffered in the district of Cadrella. I answer secondly that the text adduced is not only obscure but in all likelihood corrupt. That it is obscure Mabillon himself experienced, who so expounded it that it hinders rather than helps his own opinion: for thus does Mabillon infer from the text: And so the place where they suffered was within the bounds of the Ædui, and indeed not far from the district of Duesmois: and I too infer: Therefore outside the said district, therefore not at Semont; for that place (the words are the same Mabillon's), as also the village of Bremur, stands in the diocese of Autun, and indeed in the district of Duesmois.

[16] it is answered, But that the text is corrupt I suspect; because in our transcript from the Manuscript codex of the Queen of Sweden is read tractum pagum Dusinensem, in the Chifflet one, with which ours was collated, Dussinensem; nay, elsewhere, as I gather from the notes in the margin of our transcript, Dussiliensem. But suppose it not to be corrupt, and explain it in the manner more favourable to Mabillon's opinion, so that the sense be: When the Vandal madness was pressing, etc., at that time blessed Florentinus dwelt in the district of Duesmois, not far extended within the bounds of the Ædui (that is, not much extended), still exercising warfare for the world: what will you prove? for according to the same Acts, the Saint afterwards bade farewell to the world's warfare, gave himself to the offices of mercy, preached the faith, imitated Christ and the Apostle, and when Croccus with his Vandals came to Pseudunum, there then B. Florentinus, having in his company Hilary, a man of righteousness, was giving his labour to virtues; there he was taken and crowned with martyrdom. Will you thence conclude for certain that all was done within the limits of the district of Duesmois, and that in this district Pseudunum, the place of the passion, must be sought?

§ II. An episcopate wrongly ascribed to St. Florentinus and a diaconate to St. Hilary.

[ ] Authors who ascribe to St. Florentinus The opinion for fixing the Saints' martyrdom at Sion in the Valais falling, that opinion by which St. Florentinus was made bishop of Sion, or rather of Octodurum, and Hilary his deacon, lost its prop and fell along with it: and fell indeed in such a way that it may seem superfluous to discuss it further: yet since the oft-cited Briguet constantly adheres to this opinion also, lest we be said to have neglected anything, we must see out of what foundations some writers have dug it and published it in print. Among these I know none more ancient than John Stumpf, who in the year 1548 published in the German tongue a Chronicle of Switzerland, carried down to the year 1546, and a summary of it in the same tongue in the year 1554. In the latter he has thus at the year 411: Florentinus bishop of Sion underwent martyrdom at this time. But in the greater Work, which we have corrected, enlarged and continued by others down to the year 1606, this is read in book XI chapter 13: Sigebert writes that in the year CCCCXI St. Florentinus bishop of Sion underwent martyrdom: this some others also testify. What Sigebert wrote I shall indicate hereafter; but who those other witnesses are is unknown to me. I doubt nevertheless whether the last words were not added by Stumpf's correctors and continuators, who by others meant to designate Simler and Guillimann, since the Lucubrations of these had long since come forth before Stumpf's Chronicle, corrected and enlarged, went to press.

[18] Josias Simler in the Description of the Valais, published in the year 1574, an episcopate notes thus at page 43: Sigebert testifies that in the year of the Lord CCCCXI Florentinus was bishop of Sion. And thus speaks Francis Guillimann, book 4 chapter 3 of the Work On the Affairs of the Swiss, published in the year 1598: Sigebert has handed down to memory that soon after the slaughter and savagery of the Vandals through Gaul, Florentinus bishop of Sion was put to martyrdom by them. Claude Robert in the Gallia Christiana granted Florentinus the second place among the bishops of Sion, likewise citing Sigebert, but led thereto, as I think, by the authority of Guillimann alone, whose book and chapter he assigns as the same. The brothers of Sainte-Marthe imitated Robert, and called him Florentius; Florentius he was also called by Francis Augustine dalla Chiesa in the Chronological History of Piedmont, chapter 44, where in the series of the bishops of Sion he places him only in the third place, and at the same time notes that he is otherwise called Filorettus, and in some places Florentinus. So much for St. Florentinus's episcopate.

[19] Henry Murer went further in Holy Helvetia, and to St. Hilary a diaconate, and as his dignity was ascribed to St. Florentinus by others, so he attributed to St. Hilary also his office. For at page 183, giving the elogia of some Saints of whom Baronius and Canisius treat in their Martyrologies, and Stumpf, Simler and Guillimann in the Works cited, he says particularly of our Saints that, when the Vandals broke into the Valais and laid waste the city of Sion, they seized Florentinus the bishop together with Hilary his deacon, etc. When the elogium is finished he adds this: Of these treat Usuard, Ado, Peter in the Catal. bk. 8 ch. 124, Sigebert in the Chronicle at the year 451 [\*]. The words of Usuard, and, as some will have it, of Ado, which contribute nothing to the pretended episcopate, we have exhibited above; Peter de Natalibus is too recent to deserve to be brought forward without the testimony of the ancients for a matter so long past; although even he in no way attributes an episcopate or a diaconate to the Saints. There remains, therefore, Sigebert alone, later than the Saints' martyrdom by seven hundred years at the least, destitute of absolutely all authority of the ancients; and besides a writer neither accurate nor a stranger to little fables, and consequently, even if he most clearly established Florentinus's episcopate and Hilary's diaconate, not a sufficiently fit witness. Yet, these things being laid aside, let us see what after all he has to the present purpose.

[20] His Chronicle, as the learned know, has been committed to the press at various times; they cite in vain but imperfect and interpolated with the additions of others, until the year 1608, in which Aubert Le Mire published it at the Antwerp press according to a most ancient Manuscript codex of the monastery of Gembloux, collated with other old Manuscripts. This more exact edition of Le Mire's was not seen by Stumpf, Simler and Guillimann, nor most likely consulted by Murer: wherefore we copy out from the earlier editions the words on which they rest. Two are at hand, the Paris one of the year 1513 and the Frankfurt one of the year 1583: and in both this is read at the year 411: The Vandals, having roamed the Gauls under the leadership of Croscus, overthrow many cities and churches. Croscus at last, being taken at Arles [\] by Marianus the governor, and dragged back ignominiously through the conquered cities, is tortured to death. Under this whirlwind there are martyred among many Florentinus of Sion [\] and Hilary; Desiderius of Langres with Vincent the archdeacon; Antidius bishop of Besançon [\]. Behold here the whole foundation of the authors just cited: they thought, forsooth, that the word bishop*, expressed in the last place, belonged as much to Florentinus and Desiderius as to Antidius; which, if nothing

stood in the way, might be conjectured; since Desiderius really was a bishop.

[21] Sigebert of Gembloux; But as regards Florentinus, all the Martyrologies stand in the way, in which there is absolutely no mention of an episcopate: the Acts stand in the way, whose author, beyond doubt more ancient than Sigebert, would by no means have kept silence if he had known anything about an episcopate, much less would he have asserted that the Saint served the world in warfare until the irruption of the Vandals, by whom he was put to martyrdom: the very word Sedunensis stands in the way; for by it is designated either Pseudunum of the diocese of Autun, which is our opinion, or Sedunum of the Valais: if the first, no one has hitherto been found who has ascribed an episcopal see to Pseudunum; if the second, even so Sigebert would have erred according to Briguet himself, who contends that in the Saint's times the episcopal see of the men of the Valais was not at Sion but at Octodurum, and writes thus: But in this too he (Sigebert) was deceived, that he calls him (Florentinus) bishop of Sion. And so, lest we accuse Sigebert of more errors than is necessary, let us say that Florentinus was called by him of Sedunum or of Pseudunum, and Desiderius of Langres, to distinguish them from Saints of the same name who obtained the crown of martyrdom in another place and at another time. This interpretation is favoured by Le Mire's more correct edition, which has Sedunenses, and to which word, said of Hilary as well as of Florentinus, the word bishop cannot be referred. Thus vanishes whatever authority is fetched from Sigebert.

[22] in vain, while the others are silent, Briguet There remains, therefore, no support for Briguet beyond Annals unknown to us and a Catalogue of the bishops of Octodurum and Sion. He cites his Annals at page 60, saying: At the very beginning of the Vth century the Valais nourished a notable athlete of Christ, Florentinus bishop of Octodurum, who, the aforecited Annals affirm, bore away the palm of martyrdom with Hylarius the deacon. And he cites the Catalogue at page 65 in these words: He who in our Catalogue occurs first after Florentinus is Theodore, second bishop of Octodurum of this name. Our mind about the Annals we opened at num. 7, and we feel the same about the Catalogue, which, as we gather from other places in Briguet, is contained in the same Annals; and therefore we do not hesitate to assert here that it avails us no more for proving the Saints' episcopate and diaconate than for fixing their martyrdom at Sion in the Valais. For if they avail anything more, what was the cause that those Annals have never hitherto been cited for St. Florentinus's episcopate by anyone whom at least I know, except Briguet? Are the asserters of that episcopate to be judged so careless that not even one had recourse to the archive of Sion and consulted those Annals? So ill-advised that, while in the very place there were more certain and clearer instruments, they all rested in the doubtful and obscure and, as we have said, ill-understood text of Sigebert? That indeed I do not believe: especially since some, like Simler, Murer and Claude Robert, wrote of set purpose about the affairs, Saints and bishops of the Valais: it seems to me more likely that at least some of them, after diligent labour, found nothing there which, regard being had to authority or antiquity, they judged worth bringing forward, and were thus compelled to stand on Sigebert alone.

[23] This opinion of mine is confirmed by a man to be commended for his erudition, appeals to men of Sion of wholly doubtful authority the most reverend and most ample D. Joseph de L'Isle, abbot of the monastery of St. Leopold of Nancy of the Order of St. Benedict, whom we have often praised in tom. VI of September at the XXII day on occasion of the Little Book published by him in the year 1737 in defence of the martyrdom of SS. Maurice and his Theban Companions against Dubourdieu, a non-Catholic minister. For besides this little book he also composed in French a History of the abbey of Agaunum, whose autograph, most kindly lent to us for a time, I have before my eyes, and in which he exhibits in chronological order the Acts of the abbots of Agaunum together with the bishops who in their times occupied first the chair of Octodurum and then that of Sion, and of whom he now and again also records some deeds. And when I consider both the matter of each lucubration and the writer's diligence, I can scarcely doubt that, before he girded himself to that labour, he searched the archives of Sion, either himself or through another; but rather himself, seeing that he dwelt among the men of the Valais in the years 1723 and 1724 as professor of sacred Theology in the abbey of Agaunum in the diocese of Sion, and during all that time had a mutual communication of counsels with the most illustrious Francis Joseph Supersaxo, prelate of Sion, as he himself signifies with grateful recollection at the end of the Manuscript History. Hence, I say, I scarcely doubt that he himself saw the Annals cited by Briguet; nay, I judge them to be the same which in the History, page 102, he calls the Annals of the Valais, and in which in the same place he assigns an error.

[24] But the Catalogue or Catalogues of the bishops, received from the Valais, Annals and catalogues. he cites frequently in the course of the Work; but neither does he dissemble of how small worth they are in his eyes, when in citing them he sometimes adds: If credit is to be given to them, or something similar; when he now and then corrects them, and when at page 105 he says in general that the Catalogues of the church of Sion are not very accurate: Ne sont pas fort exacts. Lastly, how little he defers to the monuments of Sion as regards the present question he abundantly declares at page 9, writing in this manner: It is established that there was a bishopric in the Valais about the middle of the IVth century; since Theodore subscribed the council of Aquileia, held in the year CCCLXXXI, as bishop of Octodurum, today Martigny, which is situated in the lower part of that region. They will have it that he had from the year CCC a predecessor, a certain Ogerius; but no proofs are brought forward. The successors of Theodore down to Constantius, who was present at the council of Epaon, are not much known. Meanwhile it is asserted (on avance) that Florentius or Florentinus was set over the see of Octodurum in the year CDXI, and underwent martyrdom in the persecution of the Vandals; and that Rusticus succeeded him in CDXLIII.

\*. nay, 411

\. Le Mire: Arelate*

\. ibid. Sedunenses*

\. ibid. Besontionensis*

§ III. The time of the martyrdom; the twofold Acts and the judgments of the learned upon them.

[ ] Most fix the martyrdom in the 5th century; Castellanus in the 3rd. The pure Usuard or the Martyrologies more ancient than he betray the time of the martyrdom by no mark. The enlarged Lübeck-Cologne edition of Usuard says that the Saints were slain by the command of Croccus king of the Vandals. The copies of the Martyrology which Mabillon and Dominic Georgi vend for Adonian agree, as we saw above. The Acts to be published by us also agree, and Sigebert at the year 411; hence the more recent writers commonly mark this same year, or at any rate the beginning of the 5th century. On the contrary Castellanus on this day in the Universal Martyrology indicates that they suffered about 264: I believe because, according to St. Gregory of Tours, book 1 of the History of the Franks, chapter 30 and following, Chrocus — whom others call Crocus, others Croscus, others otherwise — exercised his tyranny in the Gauls in the times of the emperors Valerian and Gallienus, and under him are commemorated as martyrs SS. Liminius, Antolianus, Cassius and Valentinus, and in particular St. Privatus, bishop of Gévaudan, is asserted to have suffered. Of the four former our predecessors Bolland and Henschen have treated: of Antolianus on the VI day of February, of Liminius on the XXIX of March, of Cassius and Victorinus on the XV of May, and everywhere on the authority of St. Gregory they fixed their death after the middle of the third century.

[26] The reasons are set forth To the same time almost all the learned have also referred St. Privatus, and Tillemont himself, tom. 4 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 221, noting however that there are not wanting reasons on account of which the martyrdom might be deferred to the beginning of the Vth century. His reasons, set out in the same place in the Notes, page 651, are all, taken together, reduced to this: that in the Acts of St. Privatus certain things are narrated which do not sufficiently suit the third century. The Benedictine authors of the History of Occitania, tom. 1 page 638 and following, contending that St. Privatus suffered in the 5th century, set against Gregory of Tours — by whom they judge the chronology here to be disturbed — the Fragments of Idatius in Canisius, tom. 2 of the Ancient Readings, Aimoin, Sigebert and certain others; and from these they strive to show that Croccus's irruption into the Gauls is to be bound not to the third but to the fifth century. At least the chief arguments brought forward on both sides our Cuper exhibited in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of that Saint, tom. IV of August, page 434 and following, and added that he is not moved by the reasons of the latter, unless more evident ones be brought, to embrace their opinion; yet for their sake he generously added that he had noted the martyrdom of St. Privatus as after the middle of the third century, or perhaps at the beginning of the fifth.

[27] reasons, Generously, I say, he added this: for let us grant that the biographer of St. Privatus, who fixed his martyrdom in the times of Valerian and Gallienus, mingled into his history some things not agreeing with those times: let us grant also for the moment that from Idatius and the rest named it is proved that some Croccus was king of the Vandals at the beginning of the fifth century; do these things suffice for the death of St. Privatus to be deferred to the same century — whose very name is not read in the Fragments of Idatius or in the Works of the others, and whose martyrdom, to which Tillemont and the said Benedictines do not seem to have turned their minds, is expressly fixed under Valerian and Gallienus not only by his biographer and Gregory of Tours, but by martyrologists of the best note, Florus, Ado and — to say nothing of the more recent — Usuard? Indeed from what has just been most generously conceded nothing, in my judgment, can be concluded, save that the biographer erred in the circumstances; and either that Gregory of Tours wrote faultily the name of the tyrant under whom, while Valerian and Gallienus reigned, St. Privatus suffered, or that one Croccus raged in the Gauls in the third century and another Croccus at the beginning of the fifth.

[28] But neither is the authority set against St. Gregory so great which Castellanus's opinion that we must have recourse to one or the other. For Idatius, whence the first and chief authority is taken, does not record Croccus's irruption in his Chronicle; and in the fragments cited, as the Benedictines themselves suggest, too many fables are mingled for them to be attributed to him. In truth it appears — their words are Latin from the French — that the author of that compilation relates under the name of Idatius many things done in the sixth century, which that historian, dead before the end of the fifth, could not have written. Aimoin, a writer of the 10th and XIth century, who is adduced in the second place, is frequently accused by the learned on account of his frequent errors, and here by name by Tillemont, tom. XI of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 648, where in the Notes on St. Desiderius bishop of Langres, Tillemont, adhering to Gregory as regards king Croccus, says that Warnaharius, St. Desiderius's biographer, and others who followed him err in attributing king Croccus to the Vandals, namely of the 5th century, and, he says, more openly does Aimoin commit the same error, when he will have Croccus to have been king not only of the Vandals but also of the Alans and the Suevi, whom we know to have laid the Gauls waste with the Vandals under the emperor Honorius. Hence it is plain what his sense is about the rest who assert the same or something like it, and particularly about Sigebert, whom besides at page 650 he calls a plainly new man, to signify that his testimony's

weakness. The same the learned have determined about Croccus, both before and after Tillemont; before him, besides many others, the most illustrious Bosquet in the History of the Gallican church, book 3 chapter 39, saying that it does not seem that we should doubt further that Croccus roamed the Gauls under Valerian and Gallienus: after Tillemont our Longueval, book 1 of the History of the Gallican church; where he fixed not only, with Bolland and Henschen, the martyrdom of SS. Antolianus and his Auvergnat Companions after the middle of the third century while Croccus was raging, but also that of St. Privatus and St. Desiderius of Langres, notwithstanding the reasons adduced by that same Tillemont to prove that St. Desiderius belongs to the beginning of the 5th century, against Henschen, who in tom. V of May, page 242, had likewise marked St. Desiderius about the year 264.

[29] For this cause, I say, Castellanus, as I think, judged that SS. Florentinus and Hilary also must be referred to the same third century. makes more likely to us And indeed the patrons of the opposite opinion bring forward no ancient monument, no writer earlier than Sigebert, whence it is established that they must be drawn back to the fifth. Mabillon indeed thinks his opinion founded on the Acts of our Saints; namely that they are said to have suffered in the time of the Vandal persecution, but it is added, under king Croccus, who, as is plain from what has been said before, is not proved to have existed then; and as regards the names of the nation, those nations which had at some time laid waste the Gauls were called Vandals by writers of this kind, as the learned commonly admit: and so our author may have called Croccus king of the Vandals, whom St. Gregory called king of the Alemanni. Besides, if the matter were to be determined from the Acts, I should not hesitate to go over to Castellanus's opinion. For turn and turn again those Acts: you will not be able to deny that according to the author both king Croccus and all his army were idolaters, and the place itself given over to the worship of idols. Let us give some of his words: Florentinus, when his name, as of a Christian, was brought to Croccus, … given over to gentile blindness and to the worship of idols, was ordered to be set before the tyrant, and being asked by him his name, answered: I am a Christian;… Croccus said … Sacrifice to the gods and eat the flesh of the sacrifices. Florentinus answered: … thy gods are most wicked demons … Croccus said: If our gods are to be detested and detestable, how do they afford us defence, and, exalting kings and princes, set them in glory?… Florentinus: Permit me, and I will break in pieces thy statues, and thou shalt prove that they are not gods… Croccus said: Have the power. B. Florentinus, with his whole soul invoking Christ as his helper, full of faith broke in pieces all the images of the demons which were kept in that fort, and moreover by his prayers drove the habitation of the demons from that place. The rest agrees from beginning to end. But it does not so agree with the Vandals of the fifth century, inasmuch as they were Christians, though heretics and most deeply infected with the Arian stain: by whom therefore it is not likely that the Saints were taken because they were Christians, or put to martyrdom because they refused to sacrifice to idols.

[30] make. A not contemptible argument too can here be formed against Mabillon's opinion for the 5th century out of the Martyrology which both he and Dominic Georgi will have to be truly Adonian. For in it SS. Florentinus and Hilary are said to have been taken while they gave their labour to Christianity, and to have been punished with a capital sentence for the faith of Christ, without any indication whether by heretics or by idolaters or gentiles; which nevertheless the old martyrologists Usuard, Notker, and most strictly Ado, strictly observe as often as they commemorate Catholics who suffered from the Arian Vandals in the 5th century. Let the curious reader go to Ado's Martyrology at the XXIII and XXIX days of March, the XVII of August, the VI of September, the XII and XVI of October, the XII and XXVIII of November, the VI and XV of December, where he will read of Saints who suffered in that Vandal persecution under an Arian king, with these or like words added besides: For the confession, assertion, defence of the Catholic faith, of Catholic truth. Everywhere, I say; for although at the XVII day of August seven holy Martyrs are announced in the Vandal persecution under king Hunneric, the word Arian being omitted, that heresy is abundantly involved in the following words: For the confession of the Catholic faith and the defence of the one Baptism: whence you may most probably conclude against Mabillon either that the Martyrology which he cites is not Ado's, or, if it be, that SS. Florentinus and Hilary were not slain by the Vandals of the 5th century, or at least were not held as such by Ado. The last part of the conclusion is probably drawn also for Usuard out of his own Martyrology, where at the days already cited he always adds one of the said clauses: For the confession, defence of the Catholic faith, etc.; but on this day he says bare: At the fort of Pseudunum, of saint Florentinus, who together with blessed Hilary, after the cutting off of his tongue, was ordered to be struck with the sword. For my part, all things being duly weighed, I incline more to Castellanus's opinion; yet since nothing occurs either which plainly convinces me of its truth, I have marked it doubtfully: Perhaps in the IIIrd century.

[31] [The longer Acts are believed to have been made up by an author in the IXth century] We have twofold Acts of the martyrdom, differing at least in this, that the one is fuller than the other. I have used the fuller, when on occasion of the difficulties already set forth the Acts had to be cited or their words recited; both because I judged them more ancient than the shorter, and because I perceived that they alone are cited by the learned, and that as regards the controverted matters there is not so great a difference in the shorter ones that they can help or hinder either of the contending parties any further. Mabillon, in Cent. 4 part 2 of the Acts of the Order of St. Benedict, about to give a relation of the translation of the relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary, performed after the middle of the ninth century, brings forward one text and another from the said fuller Acts to strengthen his own opinion about the time and place of the martyrdom, and prefaces this about their author at page 492: The deed was commended to posterity by an author of that time (in which the translation was made), a monk (as at least it seems to me) of Bonneval, who wrote two little books, one on the passion, the other on the translation and miracles of the holy Martyrs. Both little books I found in a parchment codex of Rheims, drawn up at the beginning of the Xth century, from which it has seemed good to bring hither the history of the translation, some verses from the little book of the passion being premised, etc. The same Acts Ruinart also cites in the History of the Vandal persecution, page 410, but for him as for Mabillon it sufficed to praise the antiquity of the codex; there was no care to intimate of what credit a lucubration is worthy which was composed almost four hundred and fifty years — even in their own opinion about the time of the martyrdom — after the events.

[32] Tillemont, tom. XI of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 544, affirms that the same Manuscript Acts were seen by him also, are believed to be fabricated and pronounces about them in this manner: In all likelihood they were drawn up by a man to whom nothing in particular about his own History was known, and who wished to say many things. He is believed to have been a monk of Bonneval, who lived at the end of the IXth century. Baillet, in the critical table at the XXVII day of September, agreeing in the rest with Tillemont about the age and condition of the author, says: They are of no authority. The authors of the Literary History of France, tom. 5 page 398, signify that the Work was invented by the writer or fabricated out of his own wit. And indeed Tillemont and Baillet could not prudently give a favourable judgment upon those Acts, inasmuch as they referred the martyrdom of the Saints to the persecution of the Vandals of the 5th century, with which the whole series of things narrated was at odds, as we have shown above against Mabillon. But neither in Castellanus's opinion, more probable to us, with which the same series of things narrated better agrees, should I dare to attribute any certain authority to them, since in that opinion the author lived about six hundred years after the Saints' death, nor did he write in such a way as to persuade us that more ancient monuments went before him as his light.

[33] He begins indeed with these words: The History of the blessed martyrs Florentinus and Hilary pursues the order of the deed in this manner: When the madness of the Vandals, etc. at least for the greater part, But what did he mean to be understood thereby? That he had merely copied out a History related by an older writer? That he followed the order of some shorter one and here and there enlarged and embellished it? That he had gathered fragments of the deeds dug out here and there from ancient monuments and reduced them into one body? That he had welded the same work partly out of old charters, partly out of traditions? Not the first, as will presently be evidently plain. Nor the second either: for in his prologue he writes in such a manner as if he were undertaking a thing almost impossible: A hard thing, he says, and difficult has thy reverence now laid upon me, and, that I may the sooner do what is bidden, does not cease to urge me with commands: to resist which, though the greatness of the matter persuaded me, at last, taking in hand the confidence of him who says: All things are possible to him that believeth, I seized upon the work, to satisfy thy blessedness, etc. For who would speak so in earnest while he has before his eyes a shorter Work whose order he is to follow, and while the whole difficulty lies in embellishing the diction or style and increasing the narration with likely circumstances? Nor lastly does he seem to have meant the third or the fourth: for by far the greater part of the Acts consists of colloquies and disputations between the tyrant and Florentinus, which are commonly judged to be fabricated when they are not found committed to writing by an ear-witness or by another who received them from such a witness. I ask therefore whether the biographer found those colloquies in most ancient and credible monuments, or not: if so, then again he complained ineptly about the difficulty of the Work, since its greater part had only to be copied out; but if he did not find them, then that same greater part will be judged to have been fabricated gratuitously. And what shall we judge of the remaining part of the Work, when, though we generously grant that the biographer did not lack documents, we do not know of what worth these were and with what fidelity they were employed by him — nay, when in that same part there occur such miracles and prodigies as are not wont to move us to assent, though related by a nearer author, but an unknown and in some way suspect one? So much for the fuller Acts.

[34] and more ancient than the shorter: both to be given as of uncertain credit. The shorter bear no note of time, nor, as I have already intimated, do they differ from the longer save in their very brevity; the same order of narration otherwise, almost everywhere the same words kept; so that it is evidently plain either that the shorter were contracted out of the fuller, or the fuller adorned out of the shorter. The first appears to me more likely on account of the complaints alleged by the author of the fuller about the difficulty of the Work, which otherwise would have had no place. Yet since it could have happened that he, to gain fuller favour with his own, exaggerated in establishing the difficulty, I shall give both, as Acts of uncertain credit, but shall leave the remaining judgment upon them to the readers. The shorter I shall print in the second place from the single Manuscript transcript which we have of the Utrecht codex of St. Saviour; the longer I shall set first from a transcript

which is noted as taken from the Manuscript codex of the Queen of Sweden, and collated with the Manuscript transcript of the Benedictine Priory of Saxiacum, or of Seyssieu in Bugey, in the diocese of Lyons, which was in a chest of relics within the wall. For the rest, how corrupt in very many places our transcript from the codex of the Queen of Sweden is, the Annotations will make manifest, and the corrections added in the margin according to the Saxiacum Manuscript. That one lacked besides the author's prologue; but we have it copied out in Papebroch's own hand from the Legendary of Provins in Brie, collated also, as I conjecture from the variant readings marked in the margin, with another manuscript, perhaps that of Saxiacum.

§ IV. The three Histories of the translations of the relics, and a judgment of what worth these are.

[ ] Three Histories of the chief translations are assigned. What is circulated about the translations of the Saints' bodies or relics is no less exposed to difficulties than all the rest hitherto disputed. Mabillon, in the oft-cited Benedictine 4th Century, records three relations of chief translations made at different times, and one indeed, and that, as it appears, the principal, he exhibits entire from page 494 out of a parchment codex of Rheims drawn up at the beginning of the tenth century. Of the two others he writes thus at page 493: There fell into my hands a twofold Manuscript little History of the translation of St. Florentinus, of which one was made in the IXth century into the fort of St. Florentinus on the river Armançon; the other into the monastery of Lagny in the year MXCIV, under the care of abbot Arnulf. He says that a copy of the former little History was sent to him from a Manuscript codex of Auxerre, and he contracts it into a very brief summary. Of the second he adduces only some words, chiefly to this end, that he may thence confirm his own opinion about the place of the martyrdom; but he afterwards gave it too in print from the Manuscript codex of Andrew Duchesne, Cent. 6 part 2 page 805. We too have Manuscript Histories of the said three translations. The first, namely that which Mabillon printed from the Rheims codex, is noted as copied out from the Legendary of the Discalced Carmelites at Paris and collated with the Chifflet transcript from an old Manuscript of St. Benedict of Saxiacum. The second is extant in the Auxerre Manuscript codex of dom Georges Viole, as we are wont to call it. The third is indicated as taken from tom. 3 of the Legendary of the Celestine Fathers at Paris.

[36] The first, about whose author — if you regard the manner of writing and the antiquity of the codex assigned by Mabillon, very near to the things narrated — we shall inquire somewhat below, we shall also give in print: The first, whose History will be given, and therefore we shall here cull from it only some things whence the difficulties mentioned may be drawn out, namely when they are compared with what is asserted in the other two relations. And the said author writes thus in Mabillon, and in our Manuscripts, as is noted in the margin: The bodies of the holy martyrs Florentinus and Hilary were indeed venerably tended by the ancients and buried in a fitting place. But as the years came on, the neglect of certain persons brought that very place, adorned for their veneration, to ruin. Thus no small space of time went forward, and more and more the structure set beneath the bodies of the Saints [\] became weaker, so that, dissolved by excessive age, it almost fell to pieces [\]; and the tombs of the blessed Martyrs lay open to rains and winds: and by this the veneration about that place grew colder, and the concourse of the people more lukewarm.

[37] When a certain venerable abbot named Aurelian, it is said to have been made to Athanacum who at that time had been given as archdeacon to the church of Autun, had seen this through, while with ecclesiastical solicitude he diligently surveyed each thing, and had moreover learned the merit of the holy Martyrs buried within walls so obscure and ruinous, he began to turn over with himself in anxious consideration how he might thence translate the blessed bones of the Martyrs to more fitting places. And when he had opened his so pious purpose not only to the clerics but [\] also to the bishop of that diocese, at last, God bringing help, he accomplished what he ardently desired, and removed the Saints of God elsewhere, whither it pleased him. For [\] the same venerable abbot, being afterwards about to dwell in the city of Lyons [\] in the monastery of St. Martin the confessor at Athanacum, did not bear to hide away so dear a treasure elsewhere (this clause is variously read in the Manuscripts; I believe the better to be that which has: did not bear that it should rest elsewhere) but (understand: determined) to carry it with him to the aforesaid city, and venerably to set their patronage, when received [\], in his own place. More is not required for the present purpose; for the rest looks chiefly to that part of the same relics which was afterwards carried from Lyons to the monastery of Bonneval in the diocese of Chartres.

[38] But what here deserves to be observed is that with what has just been recited there agrees an old author in the 9th century. who, in Mabillon's judgment, published in the Xth century a brief Chronicle on the origin and increase of the monastery of Bonneval, and in it, in the same Mabillon page 505, related this: And when by the divine nod a certain archdeacon of the church of Autun, Aurelian by name, was going about the churches of that province, that he might himself well adorn the bodies of the Saints which were not well adorned, it happened that he found the bodies of the holy martyrs Florentinus and Hilary, and thence translated them with him to Lyons into the church of St. Martin which is called Athanacum, greatly ruined but anciently dedicated, in which he himself also was made abbot. There agrees also the clause which has been added at the foot of our transcript of the Acts of the passion from the codex of the Queen of Sweden, and conceived in these words: But after a long space of time, a holy and religious Brother doing this very thing, they were carried away to Lyons, when the same Brother, God so disposing, had come to the city of Lyons to dwell at the monastery of St. Martin, whose place-name is Athanatum. Further, that it may at least broadly be determined hitherto about what time this translation happened: Aurelian, whose Acts have been arranged by us in tom. 2 of July, page 60 and following, certainly was Abbot of the monastery of Athanacum in the year 859, and most likely dwelt in the same place long before, as I shall try to show when I come to the removal, so far as may be, of the difficulties.

[39] The second, in the same century, The History of the second translation, as I noted before, is inserted in our Auxerre Manuscript codex, but in the French tongue; that it was however first drawn up in Latin I am bidden to believe by Mabillon, who brings forward some Latin texts as copied out from that very document: and from those same texts I gather besides that the author of our codex did not strictly translate it from Latin into French; and therefore neither do I bind myself here to a strict translation; I follow only the order of the narration, and pass over what is not required for a sufficient understanding of it. Two matrons illustrious by birth, Dodelina (Mabillon calls her Godelina) and Lemissa, sisters german, the one countess of Chartres, the other of Perche, of their own accord enjoined on themselves a pilgrimage to the city of Rome, and on the way turned aside to a fort named Florentinum, by whose lord, joined to them by kinship of blood, they were honourably received. And seeing there a small chapel dedicated to the B. Virgin Mary and suited to the fostering of piety, they resolved to enlarge and rebuild it at their own expense, meaning to consecrate the remainder of their life there to the worship of the most blessed Virgin, if by the Lord's favour they should complete their pilgrimage.

[40] to the Fort of Florentinum, Money sufficient for the building of the new church being left behind, they depart, and along the way busy themselves to obtain relics to enrich it. At Rome they are given an arm of St. Hippolytus; on the return, turning aside for lodging to the fort of Breves (Mabillon writes Bremur, saying, that is, Brevis murus), they understand from the inhabitants of the place that the body of St. Florentinus had been translated thither. Their zeal wonderfully blazed up, persuading themselves that none worthier could be brought for the consecration of the church of the fort Florentinum than the relics of the Saint of the same name. At last by prayers and gifts they prevailed that the lord of Breves granted them the head and part of the body of St. Florentinus with certain relics of St. Hilary the martyr and of another martyr named Aphrodius, or, as others write, Aphrodicus or Aphrodisius. It is to be noted that Mabillon, as though exhibiting the very words of the instrument, says that they obtained the head of St. Florentinus with the GREATEST part of the relics of his body, and makes here — perhaps for brevity's sake — no mention of the relics of SS. Hilary and Aphrodius. When in the fort of Florentinum and the places round about it was learned that the countesses were returning, and about the treasure of relics brought — especially the head and some notable bones of St. Florentinus — with great piety the clergy and people went forth to meet them; among whom was a mother overwhelmed with vehement grief, because two or three days before a seven-year-old child of hers named Alodius had been snatched from her by death. Yet she had not delivered him to burial, relying on a certain hope that he would come to life again at the touch of the relics: as indeed happened on the VI day of the month of July, on which they arrived there. And the boy long afterwards survived, and was buried in the new church, which, at the request of the aforesaid countesses, was dedicated about the year 835 on the VII day of May by Aldric archbishop of Sens, to the most blessed Virgin Mary, to SS. Florentinus, Aphrodius, Hilary and others.

[41] Further, those illustrious women dwelt for many years like recluses near the same church, its History is suspect in its circumstances. and those who in life had been so joined by works of piety were not disjoined in sickness and death either: both began to sicken on the feast of the Lord's Circumcision, both passed to heaven on the Epiphany; both were buried before the altar of the B. Virgin Mary, where God afterwards made them illustrious by many miracles: which, says our collector, the Legendary of the church of St. Florentinus attests. Mabillon, according to what was said before, using the Latin instrument itself, marks the day of the arrival of the relics, or, as he has it, of their deposition in the new church, as the day before the Nones of July, and that of the dedication of the church as the Nones of May: he does not express the year; but he affords means of conjecturing it at least broadly, noting in words printed in another type that the dedication was made by lord Aldric, an industrious man and of much religion, archbishop of Sens. For that holy prelate, whose Acts Henschen illustrated in tom. 1 of June at the sixth day of the month, ascended the chair of Sens in the year 829 or the following, and ceased to live in 841, so that the author of the relation, or our collector, if the dedication was truly made by Aldric, could not have strayed far in marking it about 835. I say, if it was truly made by him: because the whole relation is suspect. Certainly, though I would not pronounce what is narrated about the two countesses absolutely fabulous, yet it must seem very akin to fables to one who considers that nothing is brought forward for their truth beyond a single local Legendary of unknown age and authority.

[42] The third History of a translation, likewise drawn up in Latin by an unknown author, The third, is much fuller than the preceding, and, as I have already said, was published in print by Mabillon, Cent. 6 part 2 page 805, yet without any critical observation of the editor upon its value. But to me at least it has seemed so insipid that I have resolved not only to refrain from reprinting it entire, but also, if I could prudently judge that Mabillon's edition would be at hand for every reader, I would gladly

have refrained from contracting it into a summary; since neither can this be done in few words and without weariness, while the series of a long narration must be sufficiently run through and the reader instructed about the ineptitudes contained in it: yet I shall do it as briefly as I can. The author, then, having prefaced some things about the zeal of the ancients in writing the Lives and miracles of the Saints and in collecting and honouring their relics, brings in Arnulf, abbot of the monastery of Lagny, conversing with certain monks in the church of St. Columba near Sens about the state of the Church and the cultus of the Saints: and on that occasion he introduces a certain monk uttering this: For I know that in a certain little fort of Burgundy, named Blesmodus, there are three bodies of Martyrs, still lying in the dust of the earth, wholly estranged from all service of the faithful: and they are in a certain church of a certain tyrant named Hausio [\], into which that robber often drives the cattle and beasts which he himself plunders, and makes of a church a stable — nay, what is worse, a den of thieves; and it very often indeed happens that those cattle and beasts lie down upon the holy bodies and roll about, and, what is horrible to hear, dung upon them. Of these one has the name of Florentinus … another … is called Hilary … but the third Aphrodisius. With these are mingled some things about their martyrdom, whose Acts our author in all likelihood had before his eyes. Whence it can be weighed (so the monk goes on) how empty and utterly nothing is the faith and devotion of those who make of the church of such great Men a cattle-stable, and of a sanctuary a dunghill. If therefore any of the faithful should in any way take away their bodies thence and translate them to a worthier place and to a people serving God, who of sound reason would say that this was unjust?*

[43] whose fuller To this abbot Arnulf, having discoursed much about sacrilege and rapine, says that it is more advisable that the tyrant be approached, and that it be tried whether, a compact being entered into, the bodies of the Martyrs can be obtained. The counsel pleases; there is deliberation about choosing a fit man: there was opportunely present at the conference Guy, abbot of Pothières (it is a monastery in the diocese of Langres, commonly Poutieres), well known to the tyrant and joined to him by a line of consanguinity: who, being asked to undertake that province upon himself, and, if he can do no more, at least to try to obtain the body of St. Florentinus, answers that the place is known to him, that it was called by the ancients Sedunum and by the moderns is named Blesmot; that the church is protected by no roof, although the part in which the altar is and in which the Martyrs are supposed to be is in some fashion covered; that the lord of the fort so gapes after earthly goods and cares so little for heavenly ones that in all likelihood he will answer their wishes. But this business is dangerous for me, adds Guy, because the men of that region greatly love that precious Martyr, though they do not venerate him as would be fitting, and because I am of their province, I fear lest they be angry with me. Nevertheless he devotes his labour. Occasion being given, he meets the lord of the place; a compact is entered into, but is by no means fulfilled; for that knight, as he is commonly called, dies shortly after.

[44] History, After three years the compact is renewed with his son and successor, who was neither holier nor less greedy of goods than his dead father, and, hostages being given on both sides, it is confirmed at Troyes before Arnulf. The execution is committed to abbot Guy and to Radulf a monk, who on the appointed day, two laymen accompanying them, set out from the monastery of Pothières to the fort. Towards night the bailiff of the said knight was with them, and with him they ascended by the steeps of a certain lofty mountain, not walking but crawling: for that mountain was so steep and impassable that it was passable to none but birds and creeping beasts, and if they had been able to see the height of its steep loftiness, they would never have presumed to ascend under anyone's guidance. At last, coming with great difficulty to the top of the mountain, they find a pleasing plain, in which, resting a little, they refreshed their wearied limbs and panting breath; and forestalling the delays of necessary rest, they rose and went forward as far as the walls of the fort itself. The bailiff is sent to the lord; he through the same man invites them to enter; they refuse, fearing treachery, and protest that they will not enter unless they be brought in by the lord himself. He goes out therefore with his retainer Milo, brings them in, leads them to the church, but one destitute of absolutely all light: what are they to do in the midst of darkness? They stick fast, they complain; there is none who dares to go out and fetch a light.

[45] as far as suffices for understanding it At last there comes, ignorant of it all, the lord's mother, carrying a burning candle, meaning to offer the service of light to the holy Martyrs. But suspecting from the bystanders what was afoot, she vehemently rebukes her son, although she had once consented to the same compact entered into with his father, and however much she cries out she is not heard; she departs, the doors are barred. The retainer Milo, who knew the place, alone, and could tell it to no other save that same lord of his, points it out, honourable enough for the condition of the place; but too difficult for the finding of what they were seeking. For the head of the tomb was hidden beneath the altar, but its end was set within the wall of the enclosure, namely the last part of the feet; and from the altar to the wall there was built with an arched curve a great cemented heap of stones, which pressed down the slab of the tomb and guarded it, lest by the ingenuity of stealthy craft the Martyr's body should be translated thence. When the monks saw this, distrusting their own strength to remove it, they were astounded, and marvelling at the bulk of its greatness they said: It is not within our power to be able to bring so laborious a work to an end, so that at least by dawn we could remove half of this mass; for that night is short, and has already for the greater part passed. After other complaints of this kind, Radulf the monk finds timbers suited to this need. With these and with an axe, which the same man had opportunely brought, they gird themselves to the labour; they lift and set down the topmost stone of the altar, then the hollow stone column found beneath it, and at last the covering of the tomb, which was a continuous stone, and firmly bound to the heap of stones; the heap being undermined, they break it with great force into two parts.

[46] The tomb being thus opened, Radulf the monk, taking the candle, looked in, it is set forth, and as he bent himself down a most monstrous dread seized him. Abbot Guy, being asked by him, refuses to look in and to take up the relics; hence contention, complaints, withdrawal from the tomb. At last Radulf washes away his faults by sacred confession; he returns to the tomb; he draws out the bones, hands them to Guy, who hides in his bosom, none seeing, a little schedule joined to them, as though foreknowing the troubles presently to be stirred up. But the knights (the lord and the retainer), when they saw the bones of the holy Martyr, were astounded, and repenting of the agreement which they had made with the monks, grieved heavily: weeping therefore and tearing their hair and breaking forth into deep sighs from their inmost heart, they said to the monks that in no way would they ever [\] suffer that the holy Martyr and the defender of the whole country should be translated elsewhere. The monks allege the compact and the plighted faith; the others set against them conditions as though contained in the compact, which they know cannot for the present be fulfilled by the monks. To this Guy: But whether you have fulfilled your promises, he says, how do we know? For what if these bones which we see are not those of the Martyr whom we seek? It may be that they are another's: (for he had hidden the written testimony). They are astounded; they withdraw a little to deliberate. Guy meanwhile shows the schedule to Radulf, on which was written: Here rests Florentinus the excellent martyr, who suffered on the fifth Kalends of October.* The knights return; the quarrel is settled.

[47] Radulf therefore received the bones of the holy Martyr in a lined tunic, but only the head was missing, which he by no means found in the tomb. And when the monks wished to depart, the knights detained them until the altar which had been destroyed was made whole again: and so, the altar being repaired … they departed; but the keenness of the eyes of Radulf, who bore the relics, was so dulled [\] … that he would never have gone out of the church unless he had been led by the hand. At last, the fort being passed, by the divine compassion the light of his eyes was restored to him. Then, having mounted their horses (which with his companion he had left at the foot of the mountain), hastening they came to Pothières, the monks of that place still sleeping; to whose Prior Burchard, meanwhile, and to the servant Waldric, the coming of St. Florentinus had been revealed. Abbot Guy, after taking some rest for a while, when he had learned of those visions, went as quickly as he could to Troyes, where, while he and Radulf refresh themselves with food at an inn, a woman, not knowing that the relics were contained in the tunic, laid her elbows upon it and began to be burnt within, like a cracklings in a frying-pan. This too being perceived, and the cause not being disclosed, they swiftly pursued their journey. Until at last the relics were carried with great apparatus and a concourse of the people to Lagny and placed in the church of St. Paul the apostle: where his (the holy Martyr's) merits very often shine forth; while the sick coming thither, health being recovered, feel his benefits… These things were done in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord MXCIV, king Philip reigning in the XXXIIIrd year of his rule, Geoffrey the bishop also presiding in the city of Paris, and Arnulf the abbot governing the church of the monastery of Lagny, in the XXVIIIth year indeed since his entrance.* These last words, like all the others inserted in the synopsis already given in the same type, are the very words of our Manuscript, collated with Mabillon's edition.

[48] and is shown to be sprinkled with ineptitudes and little fables Let the studious reader now judge whether I have called the history insipid without cause, and let him see how little the author is consistent with himself. First he says, or brings in another saying, that three bodies lie in the dust of the earth, that cattle roll and dung upon them, that of a sanctuary is made a dunghill. Afterwards he records that one body without a head was found there, in a place honourable enough, most safely laid and guarded beneath the altar in a tomb. The bodies are said to be wholly estranged from all service of the faithful, and the place where they lie hid known to none save the retainer Milo alone: yet a woman, the lady of the fort, brings a candle meaning to offer the service of light to the holy Martyrs. The mountain on which the little fort stood is asserted to be passable to none but birds and creeping beasts; yet it was inhabited by many men, who, as is plain from the context, both descended and ascended. The mass with which the tomb was covered and fortified was so great that, in the monks' judgment, the middle part of it could not be removed before dawn: yet they set about the work when the night, short … had for the greater part passed, and not only remove what had to be removed to draw out the relics, but restore the destroyed altar, and reach Pothières while the monks are still asleep; although Pothières, otherwise Pultariæ, according to the geographical maps of Burgundy and Champagne of monsieur de L'Isle, is about five miles distant from Bremur, or, as our author calls it, Blesmodus.

[49] sprinkled, I pass over the hindrances and delays; the inept altercations of the monks and knights; the knights' sudden religion at the sight of the relics, the ridiculous lamentations, and the settlement of the quarrel presently following, and other like things. But I should wish that someone would explain to me to what end those miracles or prodigies

were wrought. Why Radulf, about to go out of the church, was struck with blindness: for a little before he had both gathered the relics and had seen the schedule joined to them when abbot Guy showed it. And why, when he had gone out of the church, he was restored to sight. Was the first that he might not carry off the relics? The second that he might carry them off more expeditiously? Besides, to what end were those visions made to the Prior of Pothières and to the servant; to what end the punishment inflicted on the woman of Troyes: since Guy and his companion fled from both places with the relics, and neither was space left to them of honouring the relics, nor to her of repairing the irreverence innocently shown, nay, nor even of learning the cause why she had incurred the punishment, and of begging pardon? For my part I judge them mere fictions, committed to writing by a man not skilful enough to connect his earlier assertions with the later, and to cover his fabulous circumstances with the cloak of likelihood.

[50] it is reported to have been made to Lagny in the XIth century, Fabulous circumstances, I say: for that the relics of St. Florentinus, or at least those held to be that Saint's, were carried to Lagny in the XIth century, the History of the translation of the relics of St. Theobald the hermit testifies, in Mabillon Cent. 6 part 2 page 175 and following. For its author, who in more than one place indicates that he wrote either in the same XIth century or in the following not much advanced, has this: Nor are there wanting there (at Lagny) the precious bones of the martyr Florentinus, brought thither long afterwards by that same abbot Arnulf, the brother (it should be read, I believe, the brother) of saint Theobald, to whom rugged Burgundy shows no less an exhibition of veneration than is known to be shown to saint Dionysius the Areopagite in France. Let the reader call back to mind what was said above in the whole of num. 42, and, discerning how immensely it differs from what is here asserted about the veneration of the Burgundians towards the Saint at that very same time, let him recognize the former as more deeply a fabler: nay, since here the translation of St. Florentinus's relics to Lagny is attributed to abbot Arnulf himself, let him determine according to his own judgment what is to be thought about Guy, abbot of Pothières, of whom no notice has hitherto been brought from any other instrument than the same fabulous relation. Further, Arnulf, abbot of Lagny, a monastery in the diocese of Paris, prolonged his life until the year 1106, as is proved from documents assigned in tom. 7 of the Gallia Christiana, col. 494. Now it must be inquired whether the translations mentioned in this § can be reconciled among themselves, and with what was said before about the head of St. Florentinus preserved to this day at Bremur.

\. otherwise superposita*

\. otherwise dehisceret*

\. otherwise sed*

\. otherwise Jam quia*

\. otherwise Lugdunensem civitatem*

\. otherwise about to dwell near their tomb*

\. Mab. Haymonis*

\. read unquam*

\. otherwise obtusa*

§ V. The difficulties occurring in the Histories of the translations, and our attempt, such as it is, to remove them; the translation of some relics to the monastery of Bonneval, now sacred to St. Florentinus.

[ ] Writers have often called a part of the relics the whole, Mabillon, Cent. 4 part 2 page 497, sets out the difficulties indeed, but does not solve them, or at any rate does not so solve them as to satisfy: A scruple occurs, he says, how it can come about that the bodies of the saints Florentinus and Hilary were translated to Athanacum (in the IXth century), but a part of Florentinus granted to the men of Bonneval (in the same century), when we read in another History of his translation that all his relics, except the head, which is preserved at the village of Bremur until now, were translated to Lagny at the end of the XIth century: or how the head of St. Florentinus was left at Bremur, if it was translated (in the IXth century) into the fort of St. Florentinus, as another History has (that about the two countesses) related above. Was the body of St. Aphrodisius taken for his; or was it left by Aurelian? It must be confessed that the scruple is most difficult to remove if all things are taken in the strictest rigour: that is, if the words bodies and head be so taken that they must designate wholly entire bodies and a head not mutilated in any part. But neither the ancients nor even the more recent writers are wont, when they treat of relics, to circumscribe their words with those rigid limits, as we experience most frequently. For how often are some bones of Saints not called a body or bodies? How often is a part of a head, and that not large, not called a head? How often is one bone of an arm not called an arm, especially if they be enclosed in caskets representing the Saints, or their head or arm?

[52] Nor need examples be sought far off: let the historian of the first translation himself be heard; which we judge was done here also, how clearly he calls a part of the relics the whole will be plain to the eye. After he has narrated in what manner the sacred bones of SS. Florentinus and Hilary were carried from Burgundy to Athanacum, he adds that a part of them was granted by St. Aurelian to the monks of Bonneval, as follows: He gave them the chief part of the holy bodies, and acted with pious charity, so that both a part — nay, the whole — should remain to him, and a part — nay, likewise the whole — should be rendered to the brethren: and it came about that the reverend brethren carried with them to Bonneval saint Florentinus and saint Hilary whole, and the holy abbot who had given them retained blessed Florentinus and blessed Hilary whole for himself and his monastery. These things being set down, the greatest difficulty will not be in the name or quality attributed to the relics of the different places, but in the time in which, and the place from which, they are recorded to have been translated. For as the first History of the translation sets forth, St. Aurelian carried away the bodies of our Saints from the very place in which they were first buried; therefore from the fort of Pseudunum. According to the second Relation the body of St. Florentinus had been translated to Breves, or, as Mabillon reads, to Bremur, about the year 835, and with it in all likelihood also the bodies of SS. Hilary and Aphrodisius; since according to the same relation the two countesses obtained the relics of these also in the same place, to be carried to the fort of St. Florentinus. Here lies hidden the knot, which if it can be untied, even by likely conjectures at least, in such a way that neither relation need be absolutely accused of falsehood, much advantage will accrue for the untying of the rest. Let us make the trial.

[53] and we set forth conjectures, Let us determine, or, as is commonly said today, let us suppose, first, that Aurelian about the year 838 carried the bodies from Pseudunum to Bremur, either with the mind of laying them there more becomingly and leaving them, or of translating them elsewhere when opportunity should be given. To this conjecture the author of the first relation so far gives favour that he clearly indicates that the bodies were laid for some time in another place before they were translated to Lyons. The words are these: At last (Aurelian), God bringing help, accomplished what he ardently desired, and removed the Saints of God elsewhere, whither it pleased him. Now since the same venerable abbot afterwards chose beforehand to dwell in the city of Lyons … he determined to carry with him so dear a treasure. Let us determine, therefore, secondly, that the aforesaid countesses came to Bremur about the same time, that is, in the year 838 or the following, and obtained some relics of the Saints and a part of the head of St. Florentinus, which afterwards, as almost always happens, began to be called the head. Further, in the second relation, namely the French one, these things are related as done about the year 835; but I think this year was added by the collector of our codex for no other cause than that he found the things done in the time of Aldric archbishop of Sens, who died in the year 841. Certainly Mabillon, who had the Latin instrument, does not express the year, and leaves the time to be gathered from the episcopate of the same Aldric. Hence both our collector's about and Mabillon's words admit of an extension to the year 840 at least. And I have used that extension; because St. Aurelian is said to have been promoted to the bishopric of Lyons only in the year 874, and to have died in the year 895, and because the later the translation from Pseudunum to Bremur is fixed, the less will the age of that holy prelate be against it — which alone I have found troublesome in my hypothesis: so that I should not be forced to say that there was an error in the second relation, and that all happened later: although even then the same hypothesis would have kept its likelihood, both for the relics afterwards carried to Lagny and for those which are preserved today at Bremur.

[54] by which the difficulties Let us determine, therefore, thirdly, that St. Aurelian, some years having passed, went on to Lyons, and carried away with him from Bremur so dear a treasure, yet in such a way that he left a part of it at Bremur, either to gratify the piety of the inhabitants or to comply with the will of the bishop of Autun. Both were plainly consonant with his sanctity. Indeed he who not without the consent of the bishop of Autun had transported the bodies of the Saints from one place to another within the same diocese is not to be judged to have carried them outside the diocese without a like consent; nor is it probable either that the bishop of Autun made so little of the same relics as to suffer his diocese to be wholly cheated of them. Let us determine lastly, fourthly, that the part of the head of St. Florentinus which is to this day called the head was so left at Bremur with some other relics of his: from these Arnulf, abbot of Lagny, may have received his in the XIth century. For neither ought it to be believed that the whole body of St. Florentinus, save only the head, came to the men of Lagny, as is asserted by the author of the fabulous narration; since in the History of the translation of St. Theobald praised above it is only said that there are not wanting (at Lagny) the precious bones of the venerable martyr Florentinus.

[55] For the rest, we wish what has been said hitherto to be held for conjectures only, may in some fashion be untied. which if the inhabitants of the village of Bremur and of the fort of St. Florentinus should less approve, and should contend that they have the entire head of St. Florentinus, we leave it to them to show by more solid arguments and documents by what way they obtained it, and to prove that it is the true head of that Saint: especially since in our Manuscript relation about the sacred bones translated to Lyons there occurs mention also of the head of St. Florentinus: in our Manuscript relation, I say, because that part is not read in Mabillon. For if here too an entire head is to be understood, either it will have to be said that neither at Bremur nor in the Fort of St. Florentinus is the true head of that Martyr, or it must be determined by another conjecture that in the tomb of Pseudunum Aurelian found indeed three heads of the Saints Florentinus, Hilary and Aphrodisius, but in such a way that it could not be distinguished of which Saint determinately each was, and that from that uncertainty it came about that each was attributed to St. Florentinus, the first among the Martyrs, by those who had obtained from them an entire head or a notable part. As regards the monks of Lyons or of Athanacum, our conjectures given above cannot rightly displease them; seeing that, even with these standing, there is left to them a far greater and more certain part of the sacred bones, and according to what was said before it is most likely that at least some were left by St. Aurelian in the diocese of Autun.

[56] What we have here said of the men of Athanacum regards also others, The translation of some relics from Athanacum to Bonneval namely the monks of Bonneval in the diocese of Chartres of the Order of St. Benedict, who in the said ninth century obtained a part of our Saints' relics at Athanacum from the oft-named St. Aurelian, and one of whom, as it seems to Mabillon,

composed about the same time the History of the translation both from the diocese of Autun to Athanacum and from Athanacum to Bonneval, and of the many miracles wrought on that occasion. Tillemont assents to Mabillon: but the Benedictine writers of the Literary History of France conjecture from the manner of writing that he was not a monk: although they too judge that he was such a man as, if he was not an eyewitness, at least understood the things narrated by him from witnesses of that kind. That I feel the same about the author's age I have intimated above; yet I am not so inclined to that other opinion of theirs by which they determine that the Acts of the passion also were written by the same author. In this matter they have followed Mabillon as their leader, but he seems to have had no other foundation for his opinion — certainly he alleges no other — than that he found both little books (of the Passion and of the translation) in a parchment codex of Rheims, drawn up at the beginning of the Xth century, which does not suffice for me. For neither is it new that two little Works composed by different men should be inserted in one and the same codex, and, when they look to the same matter, be joined together.

[57] a contemporary seems to have written it, different from the biographer. However it be, I do not for my part find the same manner of writing in the Acts of the passion as in the History of the translation; greater sincerity and simplicity appears in the latter than in the former, especially where miracles are related. For the biographer extends his at length and adorns them with those circumstances which presently thrust the suspicion of fiction upon one not over-credulous; on the contrary, the writer of the translation sets out his miracles as briefly as possible, and adds nothing which smells of a fable. I know it could have happened that one and the same author indulged freely his meditations and inventions in the Acts of the passion, but adhered more scrupulously to the truth in the History of the translation, lest he should be charged with manifest falsehood by ear- and eyewitnesses then still living, to which danger he was not exposed in the Acts, asserting things removed by the space of so many centuries. But nothing presses us to believe that it so happened. Further, I here speak only of the History of the translation as it was published by Mabillon: for in our Manuscript transcripts that part of it is passed over which embraces many miracles, and in its place there is substituted another part, which not only contains other miracles but also the translation of the relics from Athanacum to Saxiacum: and this second part, in my judgment, had a different author from the first, though in all likelihood a contemporary also, as I shall show in the Annotations.

[58] A summary of the same The brief Chronicle of the monastery of Bonneval, praised at num. 38 and drawn up in the 10th century, from which I recited a few words to confirm the translation to Athanacum, exhibits the rest, namely what pertains to the relics of Bonneval, thus in summary, in Mabillon Cent. 4 part 2 page 505: And when his mind (Aurelian's, abbot of Athanacum) was flowing on in seeking monks instructed in the regular order, and he did not find them; he heard the most famous report that at Bonneval there dwelt monks approved in the regular order. And speedily sending messengers to the aforesaid monastery, earnestly beseeching that the venerable Ingelarius, abbot of the oft-named monastery, would not refuse to send him a number of monks, as is written among us. And so the man of the Lord, being full of charity, desiring the number of the servants of Christ to be increased, knowing that he who labours more shall receive more reward, chose out of his flock twelve monks, whom he sent thither well instructed and approved in the regular order: admonishing and exhorting them to make better progress from day to day. From this time the men of Athanacum took the beginning and manners of the norm of our authority.

[59] the chronicler of Bonneval gave But when the brethren had proposed to return to us, they asked of the father of the said place that some gift might be granted them which should be profitable to the father, to their own place, and to the brethren. And so the venerable abbot Aurelian gave them the chief part of the bodies of the chosen martyrs of Christ, Florentinus and Hilary, which is preserved by us until now, as is held written in our codices. At the coming of those same Martyrs many miracles were done, which are held written among us. For how great a salvation came to this place through their merits must not be kept silent. And when they had moved from Athanacum and had hastened to the city of Orleans, they turned aside on the Sabbath to the church of saint Anianus. Then they came to the church of saint Sebastian in the villa whose name is Balniolus: at which time that whole villa was given them together with the church. And now there came to meet them the venerable abbot of the monastery of Bonneval with a holy company of monks to receive the relics. Thence they came from the church of S. Andrew the apostle in the villa of Danciacum, which was given them with another villa which is called Matguenas, and … they came down to a church not yet dedicated, which is two miles distant from the monastery in the villa of Givry … it was dedicated in that honour, and by the miracles which were done there the whole villa was given to them. And then they came to the predestined place, dedicated in honour of Christ's martyrs Marcellinus and Peter, where the Saints were to be laid. Thus far the chronicler, then enumerating other gifts which were granted to the same monastery of Bonneval in honour of SS. Florentinus and Hilary, and which the curious reader may see in the said Mabillon: where at the same time he will observe, as in what has been given, points designating a defect in the exemplar.

[60] The same chronicler abundantly indicates that the History of the translation, published by Mabillon and to be reprinted by us, went before him as his light. but an error But while, in all likelihood with the mind of elucidating the matter, he added something of his own, he poured great darkness upon it: namely when he called the abbot of Bonneval — who at Aurelian's request sent monks to Athanacum, and whose name was not expressed in the History — Ingelarius, and so fixed everything later than it seems it could have been done. For of the same Ingelarius and his predecessor Gausmarus, the first abbot, he had written this before: King Charles (the Bald, by whom he had said the monastery of Bonneval was founded in the year 841) being dead and his son Louis (the Stammerer) succeeding, in the first year of his reign, there was a certain count of Châteaudun, Lambert by name, who for the love of God and of his Saints gave to the holy martyrs Marcellinus and Peter and to the lord abbot Gausmarus, for a refuge below Châteaudun, two arpents and a half of land, to be had perpetually as their own, and the crypts beneath as far as the waters. At length, abbot Gausmarus of good memory being taken from this light, the venerable Ingelarius is substituted in his governance by the whole congregation. Whence it would follow that Ingelarius was not abbot over the monastery of Bonneval before the year 878, the first of Louis the Stammerer, and consequently that the monks of Bonneval were not sent to Athanacum before that same year; which last does not appear likely for various reasons.

[61] One of these reasons Mabillon brings forward in tom. 3 of the Annals, page 17: he mingled with it, namely that in the year 878 Aurelian was archbishop of Lyons; whereas the reformation of the monastery of Athanacum and the translation of the relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary to the men of Bonneval was made while he was abbot. Therefore the same Mabillon, saying in the same place that the author of the Chronicle is not consistent with himself, and at page 219 that he was deceived, refers the reformation of Athanacum to about the year 851, the translation of the relics to 855. The Benedictine writers of the Literary History of France, tom. 5 page 397, say that this did not happen in the year DCCCLV, as Mabillon fixed it, but some years after DCCCLX, since it happened under the second abbot of the monastery of Bonneval, which was founded only in the year DCCCXLI. And thus they at least tacitly intimate that we must stand by the chronographer's reckonings: but having entered on this path, they would have come nearer to those reckonings if they had determined that all was done after the year 878, in which, those same reckonings standing, Gausmarus the first abbot was still alive. The writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, tom. 4 col. 234, had ascribed the sending of the monks of Bonneval to Aurelian to Gausmarus, and so far had joined themselves to Mabillon: but in tom. 8, col. [ ] and following, they confess indeed that the chronographer seems to fight with himself: But, they say, that all may agree together, what forbids that Aurelian, even though made bishop of Lyons, should be designated by the author of the Chronicle under the name of abbot of Athanacum alone, seeing that he kept Athanacum until his death? Let each have his own judgment about that conjecture: which same conjecture will have to be made, if all is to agree together, about the contemporary of Aurelian who was author of the History of the translation, who, when he treats of the relics found in the diocese of Autun, names him archdeacon, but when he records the relics granted by him to the men of Bonneval, calls him abbot, nowhere bishop.

[62] as is shown by the arguments brought forward, But from assenting to that conjecture both the historian and the chronographer themselves forbid me: let the latter's words recited above at num. 38 and 58 be read, let the former's words below in the History of the translation, num. 2 and 3, be read: no one will deny that Aurelian, as soon as he received the monastery of Athanacum, then destitute of monks, undertook also the care of restoring it, and to that end summoned monks from the monastery of Bonneval: and yet it is certainly established that he was abbot of the monastery of Athanacum in the year 859: nor can there be any doubt that he restored that monastery before the same year; therefore the calling of the men of Bonneval cannot be deferred to the year 874 or the following, the first of Aurelian's episcopate, much less after 878, as would follow from the chronographer's reckonings. And that Aurelian was abbot in the year 859 is established from his testament, which was made in that year, and in which he has thus: I, in the name of God, Aurelian, a poor abbot. It is established likewise from the letters of various bishops approving the testament in the same year, in which he is called the venerable man Aurelian, abbot of Athanacum. Both these instruments Mabillon gives entire in the Benedictine Cent. 4, part 2, page 498 and following.

[63] it is shown. Bonneval is sacred to St. Florentinus. That there can be no doubt that the monastery of Athanacum was restored before that year follows from the same instruments and from others bearing on it in Guichenon in the proofs of the History of Savoy, page 225: for from these it is plain that the monastery of Saxiacum was founded by Aurelian, abbot of Athanacum, and in the said year 859 brought so far forward that Remigius, then prelate of the men of Lyons, designated for it Badilo as first abbot. Hence, I say, it follows that Athanacum was restored long before. For who would believe that Aurelian took care for the erecting of a new monastery elsewhere before his own, over which he presided as abbot, was most perfectly established and sufficiently furnished with monks? Altogether, therefore, I assent to Mabillon, who refers the restoration of the monastery of Athanacum, with the help of the men of Bonneval, to the year 851; nor do I doubt that an error lurks in the Chronicle: but whether the author prolonged too long the life of Gausmarus the first abbot, or whether he substituted Ingelarius for Gausmarus too early, or applied to the latter what was due to the former, as Mabillon judges, I leave to be decided by those who shall have found mention of either by name elsewhere than in the said Chronicle. For the rest, as the very many and notable miracles which are related by the author of the History of the translation abundantly persuade us that our Saints, as soon as their

relics were laid in the church of Bonneval, were there honoured with a peculiar cultus; so also it is sufficiently established that the same cultus afterwards persevered, and perseveres until our times. That it persevered is taught by the Charter which is exhibited in tom. 8 of the Gallia Christiana among the Instruments, col. 313, and in which Adela, countess of Blois, in the year 1109, acknowledging the injury inflicted by her on the men of Bonneval, says: For the things which I had done, I made such satisfaction as the monks had sought, before the altar of the holy martyrs Marcellinus and Peter, Florentinus and Hilary. That it perseveres you may gather from this, that the same monastery, marked at the beginning with the title of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, afterwards obtained the name of St. Florentinus, and today retains that alone. Now let us proceed to the monastery of Saxiacum.

§ VI. The churches consecrated to the Saints; the present state of the relics and their cultus.

[ ] In the 9th century the church of Saxiacum was erected to the Saints, Saxiacus, as it is written in the testament praised above, was a place in the district of Lyons not far from the river Rhone, belonging to Aurelian's brothers and near kinsmen, from whom he himself obtained it with other lands and places for the erecting and founding there of a monastery in honour of God and of saint Benedict and of the most blessed martyrs Florentinus and Hilary. He uses that title once and again in his testament, and the same is used by Remigius archbishop of Lyons, by Charles king of Provence, son of the emperor Lothair, and by the bishops of the synod of Sisteron in the letters or diplomas made about the same foundation, mentioned partly in Mabillon, partly in Guichenon, in the preceding num. Mabillon and those who followed him, treating of the beginnings of that monastery, say nothing of the relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary translated thither; although Guichenon had expressly indicated it in the continuation of the second part of the History of Savoy, saying: When the church was finished, they ordered the bodies of SS. Florentinus and Hilary to be carried into it.

[65] The cause of the silence I judge to have been both that Guichenon brings forward no testimony on that matter, and their relics laid in it, and that they had not seen that part of the oft-cited History of the translation which I have said is wanting in Mabillon's edition, and which has thus: As the days came on, the venerable abbot of the monastery of saint Martin (of Athanacum), where the bodies of the saints Florentinus and Hilary had for some time been reverently kept, with certain brethren privy to it, willed that they should be carried in silence to the place which is called Saxiacus, into the church of blessed Christopher the martyr, until a fitting burial should be prepared for them in the house which was being built for them, and a famous translation should make the day. Hence it is plain again that St. Aurelian, here designated by the name of abbot of St. Martin's, erected the monastery of Saxiacum, or at least its church, as principally to our Saints as to St. Benedict. Afterwards, however, the place retained the title of St. Benedict alone, and even today it is commonly called the monastery or Priory of St. Benedict of Saxiacum, in French Saint Benoit de Seyssieu. At the foot of the oft-cited History of the translation, in our manuscript, there is added a copy of an instrument containing a list of the chief relics which are believed to be preserved in the church of Saxiacum. Since it is not long, and perhaps may be of use when in the course of the Work there shall be occasion to dispute about the relics of Christ the Lord, of the most blessed Virgin Mary and of the Saints there mentioned, it has seemed good to subjoin it entire.

[66] In the chest which is on the side of the piscina are the bodies of the Saints and the relics of Florentinus, whose relics afterwards Yllarius, Cosmas and Damian. Relics of saint Julian and Eustace. In one alabaster vessel are most precious relics; namely five thorns of the crown of our Lord Jesus Christ: the crown remained outside. Item, one [\] small phial filled with the milk of the Virgin Mary. Item, of the garments of blessed Mary. Item, relics of the Innocents. Item, in the chest which is above the said chests are relics of saint Peter; of saint Mamertus; of saint John; of saint Scholastica; of the saints Cosmas and Damian; of saint Euphemia; of saint Virgil; of saint Pontius [\] bishop and martyr of Britain, who came with the Virgins; of saint Sabaria virgin; of saint Albina virgin and martyr; of saint Damarius; of saint Poderius; of saint Irenæus; of saint Albinus.

[67] were enclosed in new caskets. Item, this stone monument and the three chests which are within, brother Peter de Cornesio caused to be made, and the holy relics named above were placed and transferred by the said sacristan, though unworthy: and he was the repairer of the whole presbytery, and they were made and laid up by the said brother in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and seventy-six, and on the XXI day of the month of February. Then follows this note: Thus far the old Manuscript found in the year MDCXVI with the aforesaid relics in the church of the Priory of saint Benedict of Seyssieu. What follows on the next page has been recently added. And this contains a French relation, in which it is said that the most illustrious Denis de Marquemont, archbishop of Lyons, with John Peter Camus, bishop of Belley, assisting among many others, on the X day of May 1616 drew the aforesaid relics from the monument and deposited them in a chest of fir: until new reliquaries should be made. These being made, the said bishop of Belley, being asked by the archbishop of Lyons, who was hindered by other business, went in procession to Saxiacum, with the priests and canons of the clergy of Belley accompanying him and a huge multitude of men in the manner of a supplication, and on the XII day of June of the same year transferred the relics, set them on the altars, and preached to the people.

[68] The church of the fort of Florentinum Another church consecrated to SS. Florentinus, Hilary and Aphrodisius we assigned at num. 40, namely at the Fort of Florentinum, or as it is now called, the town of St. Florentin, which is situated in Champagne of France on the river Armançon, and to which we read that some relics of those Saints were translated in the ninth century. It remains that we briefly run through its History too, so far as it pertains to our Saints. The author or collector of our Auxerre Manuscript codex sets it forth at sufficient length; but here and there he signifies that he relates some things from conjecture. He thinks therefore that that church was erected into an abbey, and indeed in such a way that there were there two monasteries dedicated to St. Florentinus, one of men, the other of women: but that in course of time they came into the hands of seculars and were possessed by them until about the middle of the XIth century; at which time Theobald, count of Champagne, gave both to the abbey of St. Germain of Auxerre, under this condition, expressed in the instrument of the donation, that neither clerics nor nuns should be introduced there, but only monks of the abbey of St. Germain. Of the same donation Guy, abbot of St. Germain, also makes mention, who at the end of the 13th century collected the deeds of the abbots of his monastery, writing thus in Labbe, tom. 1 of the Library of Manuscripts, page 573: The same count Theobald also, at the instance of the aforesaid abbot (Odo), gave to God and to saint Germain the monastery of saint Florentinus in the Fort, with the monastery of saint Vetulus, with all right and entirety, and fortified it with the privilege of that liberty.

[69] with the monastery Our collector adds, however, that he does not find that that pious will of the count took effect: on the contrary he says it is established that canons were then introduced into the church of St. Florentinus. But since these did not fulfil the hope conceived of them, Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens from the year 1122 until 1144 according to the Sainte-Marthes, gave the church again to Gervase, abbot of St. Germain of Auxerre, on this condition, that as the canons died he should substitute monks; which condition he himself fulfilled in such a way that out of the two monasteries of St. Florentinus he made two Priories subject to the abbey of St. Germain. But our collector says it is likely that that distinction of Priories did not last long, and that the monks, since pastoral care was not consonant with the quiet which the Benedictines professed, were ordered all to betake themselves to the Priory of old St. Florentinus, which was situated within the citadel or fort of the town, and whose church was adorned with the relics of St. Florentinus and of very many other martyrs; so indeed that thenceforth pastoral care was fixed to the church which even now stands in the town of St. Florentin itself.

[70] I would not deny that that writer had at hand documents from which he learned what he brings forward about the two Priories; consecrated to them; yet there is nothing by which I may confirm it. On the contrary he himself confesses that Odo, viscount of St. Florentin, when he transferred to the same abbot Gervase and the monks of Auxerre all that he possessed in the church of St. Florentinus, made mention of one Priory only, and that the Roman Pontiffs did the same — Eugene III in the year 1151, Anastasius IV in 1153, and Hadrian IV in 1155 — in these words: The monastery of S. Florentinus with its appurtenances. To these might have been joined abbot Guy in Labbe, just praised, page 576; where, treating of Gervase, he says: Drawing out of the secular hand the church of saint Florentinus, in which until his time there were secular canons, he made it a Priory, establishing monks in it with the consent of Henry archbishop of Sens; which deed he obtained to be confirmed by Pope Innocent (the second of that name, who died in the year 1143). Certain customs also which the viscounts had in the said church he obtained to be remitted to the aforesaid church by Otho the viscount, with the consent of Theobald count of Blois, lord of St. Florentin. Other things demanding a place here Guy does not give; nor likewise our collector, except this clause of his, which I copy out translated from French into Latin: In the year MDXXXV the Priory was plundered after the death of Prior Parceval de Montarbii; the relics were carried into the parish church, where they are even now, except one … and some tiny bones in a wooden casket, left in the church of the Priory. René de Champs, who, as is believed, was the first commendatory Prior, brought a suit and obtained a sentence in court against those who after the death of his predecessor had plundered the reliquaries and furniture of the Priory; but the inhabitants of St. Florentin opposed themselves to the execution of the sentence.

[71] From all these things it cannot be doubted that our Saints are there honoured with a festival, where the relics of St. Aphrodisius are also honoured. and by name St. Florentinus as patron of the place. That the relics of St. Aphrodisius also are honoured there Castellanus is our author; but a day does not seem to have been designated for his peculiar cultus: since the same martyrologist has placed him only in the Corollary of those Saints who have no fixed day. The French words run thus at page 929: S. Aphrondisius: whose relics are at the town of St. Florentin in Champagne, where he is believed a martyr, and he is called in the less ancient Manuscripts Aphrodicus. He had said like things at page 740 in the Corollary of his Martyrology, treating of SS. Florentinus and Hilary and adding this: Where (in the town of St. Florentin) there are besides honoured the relics of a certain S. Aphrodisius martyr, different from the bishop of Béziers, who in the ancient Manuscripts is called Aphrondisius, in the more recent Aphrodicus: which (relics) were said from the IXth century to have been found at Bremur with

the relics of two others. According to what is narrated in our Acts, Aphrodisius, or Afrodius as it is written in the longer, or Affrodisus as in the shorter, in all likelihood underwent martyrdom at the same time as Florentinus: yet I have found him inscribed in no sacred Fasti; and therefore I have only doubtfully joined him to the others on this day.

[72] Relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary are also preserved at Agaunum: There are in the monastery of St. Maurice of Agaunum in the Valais also relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary, thus reckoned in the list which we gave in tom. VI of September, page 355: There are four less notable silver reliquaries, and in them are preserved some relics of S. Amatus, bishop of Sion and abbot of St. Maurice; of SS. Florentinus, likewise prelate of Sion, and of his deacon Hilary, martyrs. Our sense about the episcopate attributed to St. Florentinus and the diaconate to St. Hilary we have abundantly opened above; nevertheless we believe that they are their relics, and that the more willingly because the most reverend D. de L'Isle, abbot of St. Leopold of Nancy, who now and then cites Manuscripts of Agaunum, assigns the time and manner in which they came thither. For in the Manuscript History of the abbots of Agaunum, praised at num. 23, page 107, recording the journey which abbot Gerold had undertaken to Paris at the command of St. Louis king of the French, he notes: Gerold, on his return from Paris, turned aside to Lyons: Aygler, abbot of Athanacum, gave him as a gift certain relics of S. Pothinus and his Companions; of S. Florentinus and S. Hilary martyrs, and a particle of the cradle of our Redeemer. There is no need to warn the reader that these things belong to the 13th century; but it might be asked how the relics of SS. Florentinus and Hilary are said to have been given at Lyons by the abbot of Athanacum; seeing that their sacred spoils, according to what was related above, were translated from Athanacum in the ninth century to the church of the monastery of Saxiacum erected for them. But it will be answered either that some, which is most likely, were left at Athanacum, or that Aygler, one of whose predecessors, St. Aurelian, had been the founder of the monastery of Saxiacum, received them there to be given to Gerold of Agaunum.

[73] Those which were at Lagny have been scattered; but the cultus perseveres. The relics of St. Florentinus which the Benedictine monks of Lagny in the diocese of Paris formerly preserved in their sacred treasury are now scattered, but his notable cultus there perseveres hitherto, as Mabillon notes in Cent. 6 part 2 of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, page 805, saying: For the rest, this sacred pledge, which for the space of nearly five hundred years had been religiously kept in the church of Lagny, was reduced to ashes in the century just past by the Calvinist heretics, who, supported by the authority of Odo of Châtillon, secular abbot and chief favourer of the heretics, plundered all the resources of the monastery and the ornaments of the church. Yet our fellow monks of Lagny continue to celebrate two festivals of Florentinus; one, namely, on the XXVII day of September, which is thought to be the birthday of the holy Martyr; the other under the name of his Reception or Translation, on the VII day of May, on which his sacred body is believed to have come to the monastery. In what manner the word body is here to be understood is to be gathered from what precedes.

\. read una*, etc.

\. otherwise Ponosii*

ACTS

Of doubtful credit.

By an anonymous author.

From Manuscripts collated among themselves.

Florentinus, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Hilary, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Aphrodisius, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

BHL Number: 3033

By an Anonymous author.

Prologue. A hard ^a thing and difficult has thy reverence now laid upon me, and, that I may the sooner perform what is bidden, it does not cease to urge me with commands ^b; to resist which, though the greatness of the matter persuaded me, at last, taking in hand the confidence of him who says: All things are possible to him that believeth, I seized upon the Work, to satisfy thy blessedness. If anything there be perhaps done less becomingly, thou shalt believe it imputed to thyself, who didst not fear to lay so great a weight upon light shoulders. Yet the victory of the Martyrs will not therefore perish; since [\] he himself will have completed it, by whose name alone they could become strong and victors, who both gave them the boldness of a sure hope [\] in the Gospel and most truly promised that he would fight along with them: "They shall lay their hands upon you ^c and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons, dragging you before kings and governors for my name's sake. And it shall happen unto you for a testimony. Lay it up therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand how you shall answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay. And you shall be betrayed by your parents and brethren, and kinsmen and friends: and some of you they shall put to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake: and a hair of your head shall not perish. In your patience you shall possess your souls." And: "Whosoever ^d shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God." And: "Whosoever ^e shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved."

[2] The history of the blessed martyrs Florentinus and Hilary pursues the order of the deed in this manner ^f. St. Florentinus, having left the world's warfare, When the madness of the Vandal [\] persecution and the frenzy of the enemy was most cruelly pressing the peoples of the Gauls round about ^g: and when [\] the same nation, having gone out from the uttermost bounds of Gaul, namely from that part where the river Vindelicus ^h — whence also their name — flows past the Gallic [\] territories, had by its ravaging afflicted the greatest part of the world; at that time B. Florentinus, still exercising warfare for the world, dwelt within the bounds of the Ædui, not far the tract of the district of Dusinum ⁱ. He after a little, despising and casting off the warfare which, the world compelling him, he had hitherto held, and to which [\] he had submitted his hands and arms, betook himself wholly to the true warfare of Christ, about to fight with the prince of the world with spiritual arms; he wholly submitted himself, and resolved with his whole heart to endure in it and to die for it.

[3] With loins girt, always bearing in his hands the burning lamps of good works, he consecrates himself wholly to the virtues; he denied himself to himself and took up his cross daily, crucified to the world, and the world to him. He stood in the faith: against the snares of the devil he acted manfully, and untiringly followed Christ. And when at last he stretched himself out to every work of piety, being most of all liberal in almsdeeds, he denied to no one the offices of mercy, but also with his word — for this is the first work of piety — he taught those whom he could; that, unbelief being laid aside, they might leave the ways of errors [\], love the light of the faith, discern [\] the paths of justice, and lay hold of the way of Christ. And a life of holy conversation, fit to be imitated, he gave to all, as he himself imitated Christ. But that I too may touch upon something of the frugality of his food: (as one who heard the Apostle: I chastise my body and bring it into subjection; lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway) so great did it remain in him that it would be told almost incredibly ^k. For when this kind of first martyrdom was now his whole affection [\*], and his whole mind flowed out into the love of God, I shall next attempt to tell, with Christ's help, in what order he came to the other.

[4] he is set before the tyrant; The barbarous nation, exceedingly savage in impiety, of which I spoke a little above, when it was drawing out the sheath [\] of its ferocity this way and that, sparing neither city nor any people, but casting down forts, burning the places of the inhabitants, pressing them with the sword and spreading terror everywhere, at last came [\] with Croccus their king ^l to the fort of Pseudunum: where B. Florentinus, having in his company Hilary, a man of righteousness, was then giving his labour to virtues. And when a multitude, stirred by the report of his virtue, flew together to him from every side, and the benefit of his piety and sanctity answered [\] to all, at last his name, as of a Christian, was brought to Croccus king of the Vandals, given over to gentile blindness and to the worship of idols. And because wisdom is an abomination to the sinner, and fools always detest those who flee from evils, straightway that same Croccus ordered him to be presented to him. Presently he too, burning with the will of martyrdom [\], presented himself: whom Croccus, beholding him standing before him, accosts with words of this kind: By what name art thou called? B. Florentinus [\] said: I am a Christian; this is my name, this my first dignity. Croccus said: I ask thy name, not thy profession. B. Florentinus says ^m: What thou so anxiously askest — from my parents my name is Florentinus, I am a Christian. Croccus says: Of what office art thou? B. Florentinus answered: I am a soldier, and not the soldier of any prince whatsoever, but of Christ the almighty God [\]. Croccus said: Art thou free, or art thou held bound by a servile condition? B. Florentinus answered: Before I was regenerated by Baptism in Christ and redeemed by his precious blood, and made free [\] by his grace, and absolved from the original debt, I confess that I was a slave of sin: but my person and the condition of my birth, I confess, brought me forth free-born to the world* ⁿ.

[5] he professes himself a soldier of Christ; Croccus said: That thou wast a soldier and once bound to the wages of warfare, I have understood; I ask who released thee. But the man of the Lord, Florentinus, filled with the Holy Spirit, says ^o: In that part of my warfare [\] and girding on of arms [\] and the discharge of arms I came by the bounty of stipend as far as a hundred gold solidi; but for the love of piety and for the love of my God, whose words touched the ears of my heart: "Give alms, and behold all things are clean unto you," that I, being perfect, might perfectly follow him: having bestowed that same money on the poor, and despising the warfare of time and bloody arms and the butchery [\] of the flesh, I gave myself wholly to his warfare, and, about to serve in his camp, I transferred myself wholly to his commands [p]; that his name may be glorified in me, and that I may become the victor over enemies through him, and that he may reign in me, made chiefly the victor over death [\], who alone is Prince, King of kings and Lord of lords, who founded all things, who holds together all things that are, who lives and reigns for ever, of whose kingdom there shall be no end.

[6] Croccus said: Obey me and hear me; sacrifice to the gods and eat the flesh of the sacrifices, he bravely defends his faith, that thou mayest enjoy a tranquil life in glad years [\]. B. Florentinus answered: No man can serve two masters; my God is the God of sobriety and of meekness, the victor [\] of chastity, the lover of piety, and the teacher of humility, the leader of temperance, the standard-bearer of every virtue, who by ruling and governing leads men to eternal life in the heavens. But thy gods are most wicked demons, lovers of all malice, contrary to all goodness. How then shall I be able to practise the worship of idols and the work of unclean spirits, having forsaken God and set behind me every work of piety? Croccus said: If our gods are to be detested and detestable, and savour of things contrary to goodness; how do they afford us defence, and, exalting kings and princes, set them in glory? S. Florentinus answered: Thou errest, Croccus, in thinking that your demons afford you protection and defence; whereas they chiefly afford ruin and downfall, nor at all are kings and powers by them

exalted; but through them they are bent down and humbled to eternal punishment.

[7] For the rule belongs to our God alone: by his most just judgment and most ordered provision are these temporal things granted either to the good or to the evil. and execrates the idols; Nor is this, as thou sayest, in the power of those most unclean beings — not gods but demons: since not even they can do anything in the creature and in the creature's affairs save so far as it is permitted them by the true God. See therefore that your worship is contrary to our Christianity, for truly there is light in our religion which you know not; for having your understanding darkened with shadows, you are not able to grasp the light of truth, and because you abide in darkness, meditating pride and avarice [q], you hold peace in hatred: everything unjust pleases you, to pursue wars, to sow discord; only what is pious and chaste you loathe. In this your gods press you on [\]. Croccus said: I am a philosopher, and I have learned philosophy from the first philosophers: I find [\] that thou hast said nothing stable, nothing fixed in the things thou hast set forth. Come and sacrifice to the gods, taste of the sacrifices of the gods; thy God will bring indulgence, since thou wilt have sacrificed in obeying the commands of a king. For I see thee greatly wasted with leanness, and that thou hast lost thy former beauty through excessive pallor; and thy thin [\] voice too shows thee much afflicted with fasting: certainly thou wilt by no means be able to endure the punishments prepared: only sacrifice, lest thou compel us to prolong the punishments of thy life.*

[8] S. Florentinus answered: If thou wilt hear me, and become [\] a Christian, after thou hast known the true God, the most unclean demons will not be able to hurt thee; they are altogether most impure, and contrary to all goodness [\]. his tongue is cut off; Croccus, being angered, ordered the teeth of the holy Martyr to be broken by striking his head [\] and his mouth to be grievously bruised, saying: Do not blaspheme the gods. Hence let thy tongue be cut off; because, he said, thou hast dealt wickedly against the gods [\]: which deed B. Florentinus bore patiently, rejoicing and exulting in the Lord. He was uplifted in hope [\], because his name was written in the heavens and set down in the book of life: embracing only the true faith and true charity. But the Holy Spirit, who wrought in him, lest he should seem less powerful, made a manifest display of power. Nor was he for whom he suffered, Christ, wanting to him for consolation; who himself also promised that he would afford confidence to his own when they suffered [\], and would bestow knowledge, saying: And when they shall deliver you up, take no thought what or how you shall speak; for it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you [r].

[9] Presently, the tongue being cut off, though the depths of his mouth lay gaping open, he speaks more eloquently than before, and by his prayers and the way of his throat, laid open and spread wide, all but disclosed the gulf of his belly — and as though that member had never been cut off, but were discharging its own uses [\] — the words of the Martyr eloquently resounded the faith [\] of Christ: O exceedingly senseless man, he said, dost thou think to inflict torments on me if thou hast broken the teeth of my mouth? If thou hast cut away the tongue of my flesh and of my throat? Whereas by these things thou wilt have prepared for me the rest of life, and wilt have made me famous by power [s], so that I may be able to speak out more freely, more clearly and more eloquently the faith which I venerate with a full heart. Permit me; I will break in pieces thy statues: and thou shalt prove that those who dwell in them are not gods. The choice being made for thee, if they do not hurt me, that thou oughtest forthwith to despise their false worship; and if they hurt me, that I go honouring them [t]. Croccus said: Have the power. B. Florentinus, with his whole soul invoking Christ [\] as his helper, full of faith, broke in pieces all the images of the demons which were kept in that fort, and moreover by his prayers drove the habitation of the demons from that place. And that the power of the Lord might shine forth more fully in the holy Martyrs [u] (for Hilary, presently to be a Martyr, remained his companion in the work), the malignant spirits, seizing Croccus and certain of his ministers, began to torment them; and being long tortured they were cast down at the feet of S. Florentinus, while the people implored him, who moved with fear cried out: There is no God but the one God of the Christians*; so that their faith, being more richly strengthened, might grow, and they were forthwith healed, and the malignant spirits restrained from harming them.

[10] he breaks the idols in pieces; he puts the demons to flight. And so far was the power of Christ spread abroad that very many, leaving the idols, acknowledged and confessed Christ himself [\] as their saviour, and, being themselves made [\] members of Christ, reverently honoured the Martyrs of God out of love of piety. But as envy is always wont to be contrary to virtue, the unjust, not bearing the favour of the judge towards the good, being goaded on, stir up king Croccus against the Martyrs; he has broken the images, he does many [\] magical things, and he is a worshipper not of the true God, but, we know not of what God, they say [x]. Moved by these and like things, he ordered the blessed Martyr to be presented to him. Thou knowest, he said, that through thee we suffer peril to our kingdom: we know not by what magical arts thou art strong, or in what manner thou hast imposed silence on our guardians [y]. They are shut out hence from our fort, which they used to inhabit; they spurn the care of us, perhaps taking it ill that thou shouldst prevail so much among our people: grave peril is at hand if we are deserted [\] by those to whom we have submitted the power over our life.

[11] S. Aphrodisius, his tongue likewise cut off, speaks. While he was carrying on furiously in these matters, a certain Afrodius [\], great in rank but greater in the name of Christ, together with the other registrars — for he was the first of them — gave such an answer: By him who afforded us salvation, and gave the benefit of salvation, and enlightened the sense of our mind, great is the name of the Christians. Do not deny him, nor hurl any blasphemy against his servants, lest perchance it be not granted thee with impunity [\]. Croccus, being moved, repaying his worthy counsels with unworthy deeds [\], ordered his tongue to be cut off, as formerly [\] B. Florentinus's. But the word of faith and the confession of the Holy Spirit could not be so repressed either: for the same Holy Spirit was no less able to work in him than in S. Florentinus. For more expressly than is wont did the true witness sound forth Christ the author of his speech [z], and the king himself for his wicked deed, and the praise of God resounded more clearly and eloquently from his mouth.

[12] Moreover the holy martyr Florentinus, always commending the groans of his heart to the Lord, strove to obtain by prayers both that he himself might worthily consummate his martyrdom and that piety [\] might not fail in his colleagues. SS. Florentinus and Hilary are beheaded; Meanwhile, when the most iniquitous king could by no means bend those who were fixed fast in the truth, but saw that they confessed Christ the more ardently [aa]: he gave sentence that the martyrs of God, Florentinus, and with him Hilary — as one who was his equal in life and in vow — should be beheaded. His command being straightway received, the executioner ran in haste to the shortening of the Martyrs; and, their victory being consummated by so glorious an end, the happy men obtain the kingdom of heaven: joined for ever to him whom they had loved in death [\], the Lord Jesus Christ, who is always present as a loving consoler to those who fight for him, and is always made a sure rewarder to those who conquer.

[13] But Croccus, for his crime, being seized and dissolved with a most grievous pain of body, the tyrant, punished and repenting, takes care that the bodies be buried. and besides deprived of his eyes, when he found no remedy anywhere, was nevertheless by divine mercy succoured, though now despairing, in this manner. For before the bodies of the Martyrs he is wholly poured out and confesses that he has done ill. Straightway, by the merits of the Martyrs — who have learned from the Master of all good rather to repay good things for evil — he received the light of his eyes with the restoration [\] of it. And to show that he was rendering thanks to the Martyrs for the benefit bestowed [\], he ordered their bodies to be wrapped in linen cloths with reverence and translated, and honourably buried in the same fort [bb], and the just [\] zeal of the people gladly follows. Now their bodies were tended [\] on the fifth Kalends of October, and being famous [\*] for miracles to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ; their reward being received, we believe that they live for ever and ever. Amen [cc].

ANNOTATIONS.

THE SHORTER ACTS

From the Utrecht Manuscript of St. Saviour.

Florentinus, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Hilary, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Aphrodisius, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

BHL Number: 3034

From Manuscripts.

St. Florentinus, intent upon pious works, When the madness of the Vandal persecution was grievously pressing the peoples of the Gauls, blessed Florentius, a soldier, dwelt within the bounds of the Ædui, not far the tract, the district of Dusinum. He after a little, the world's warfare being cast off, submitted himself wholly to the warfare of Christ: he resolved as a sinner [\] to endure in it, and to die for it. And when at last he stretched himself out to every work of piety, being most of all liberal in almsdeeds, he denied to no one the offices of mercy; but with his word also he taught those whom he could that the way of eternal salvation must be followed. And by frugality of food he so chastised his body that it would be almost credible [\] to tell it.

[2] And when the aforesaid nation of the Vandals, sparing none, he is summoned to the tyrant, had come to the fort of Sedunum with Croscus their king, where blessed Florentius, having in his company Hilary, a just man, was then giving his labour to virtues, and to whom a multitude, stirred by the report of his virtues, flew together from every side: king Croscus, struck by a report of this kind, ordered the Saint to be presented to him; and presently the Saint, burning with martyrdom, willingly presented himself. And when they had disputed at length between them about the faith of Christ and the worship of the gods, and when the king could by no means induce the Saint to worship his god Jupiter ^a and to eat of things offered to idols [\]; but rather the Martyr despised the king's gods and hurled contumelious words against them: the king, being angered, caused the Saint's teeth to be broken by striking and his mouth grievously bruised, saying: Do not blaspheme the gods; then he cut off his tongue, saying: Thus shalt thou pay for whatever thou hast done against the gods.*

[3] But the holy man of the Lord prayed, and behold the Spirit of the Lord, and, his tongue cut off, he speaks more eloquently; who wrought in him, made a manifest display of power: for presently, the tongue being cut off, though deeper openings lay gaping, and the spread [\] way of his throat all but disclosed the gulf of his belly, as though that member had never been cut off, the Martyr eloquently resounded the faith of Christ. O exceedingly senseless man, he said, thou thinkest thou hast hurt me if thou hast broken my teeth and cut off my tongue; whereas by these things thou wilt have prepared for me the rest of life? Thou hast made me famous by power; but that I may be able to speak out more freely and more eloquently the faith of Christ. Permit me to break in pieces thy statues, and thou shalt prove that those who dwell in them are not gods, the choice being made for thee, that, if they do not hurt me, thou shalt despise their worship; and if they hurt me, thou shalt make me go honouring them.* To which Croscus consented.

[4] Then the Saint broke in pieces all the images which were kept in that fort, he breaks the idols in pieces and converts many to the faith. and by praying drove away the habitation of the demons: and straightway the malignant spirits, seizing Croscus and certain of his ministers, began to torment them; and, being long tortured, they were cast down at the Martyr's feet; and while the people implored him, who moved with fear cried out: There is no God but the one God of the Christians, that their faith might grow, they were forthwith healed. From which deed very many, leaving the idols, were converted to Christ, reverently honouring the blessed Martyrs. But afterwards unjust judges stir up king Croscus against the Martyrs of Christ, lying that they had broken the images by magic art and that they were not worshippers of the true God. Moved by these and like things, Croscus said to blessed Florentinus ^b: Thou knowest, he said, that through thee we suffer peril to our kingdom: for we know not by what magical arts thou art strong, who hast brought silence upon our gods. They are shut out from this our fort, which they used to inhabit, perhaps taking it ill that thou shouldst prevail so much among our people. Grave peril is at hand if we are deserted by those to whom we have submitted the power over our life.

[5] S. Aphrodisius, his tongue likewise cut off, speaks. And when he was saying such things, a certain Affrodius, a Christian great in rank, together with the other registrars — for since he was the first of them — freely rebuked and reproved the king. The king, not bearing his free rebuke, ordered his tongue to be cut off, as formerly blessed Florentinus's; and the Holy Spirit wrought no less in him than in saint Florentinus: for, preaching Christ more expressly than is wont, he rebuked the king himself, and the praise of God sounded more clearly and more eloquently from his mouth ^c.

[6] SS. Florentinus and Hilary are beheaded. But the king, seeing that he could not draw the Saints away from the truth of their confession, gave sentence that Florentinus and Hilary should be beheaded. Which being done, Croscus, for the crime he had committed, being seized and dissolved with a most grievous pain of body, and besides blinded in his eyes, when he found no remedy anywhere, is prostrated with his whole body in humility before the bodies of the Martyrs, and confesses that he acknowledges his evil deed. Straightway, by the merits of the Saints — who had learned from Christ to repay good things for evil — he received the light of his eyes with the restoration of his strength. And presently he ordered the bodies of the Saints, wrapped with reverence in linen cloths, to be translated and honourably buried in the same fort. The zeal of the people gladly carries out his command. Their bodies were tended on the fifth Kalends of October, remaining famous for miracles.

ANNOTATIONS.

THE TRANSLATION AND MIRACLES

By an anonymous contemporary author.

From Manuscripts collated with Mabillon's edition.

Florentinus, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Hilary, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

Aphrodisius, M., at Pseudunum among the Ædui. (S.)

BHL Number: 3036, 3038, 3037

By an Anonymous author.

PART I.

St. Aurelian translates the sacred bones The bodies of the holy ^a martyrs Florentinus and Hylarius were indeed venerably tended by the ancients and buried in a fitting place; but as the years came on, the neglect of certain persons brought that very place, adorned for their veneration, to ruin. Thus no small space of time went forward, and more and more the structure set above [\] the bodies of the Saints became weaker ^b, so that, dissolved by excessive age, it almost fell to pieces [\], and the tombs of the blessed Martyrs lay open to rains and winds, and by this the veneration about that place grew colder, the concourse of the people more lukewarm. When a certain venerable abbot named Aurelian, who at that time had been given as archdeacon to the church of Autun, had seen this through, while with ecclesiastical solicitude he diligently surveyed each thing; and had moreover learned the merit of the holy Martyrs buried within walls so obscure and ruinous, he began to turn over with himself in anxious consideration how he might thence translate the blessed bones of the Martyrs to more fitting places.

[2] And when he had opened his so pious purpose not only to the clerics to the restoring of which monastery but also to the bishop of that diocese, at last, God bringing help, he accomplished what he ardently desired, and removed the Saints of God elsewhere, whither it pleased him. Now since the same [\] venerable abbot, being afterwards about to dwell in the city of Lyons in the monastery of blessed Martin the confessor at Athanacum ^c, chose beforehand not to hide away so dear a treasure anywhere else, but to carry it with him to the aforesaid city, being about to dwell there and venerably to set their patronage in his own place ^d. At that time the monastery once at Athanacum [\] had been abandoned by the monks. And that same pious man, desiring to restore it to its ancient state, with illustrious persons striving to help — the count and his renowned wife ^e — began carefully to search here and there for servants ^f who might fill the place, and to gather from here and there those whom he saw to be fervent in the monastic order. But when he had commended all his hope in this to God, behold the mercy of almighty God gave consolation in this matter ^g.

[3] Now there is a certain monastery well founded with religious men, the monks of Bonneval lend their labour, carefully fortified with a religious prelate, which those dwelling round about call Bonneval; thence by God's gift a goodly number of monks

he demanded of the father of the place. And he kindly granted what was demanded, and gave monks nurtured in the regular order: and this man no less readily received them, and, helping with what strength he could, urged them on to restore the sacred place to its pristine religion [\], and rejoiced incomparably that he had received the gift for which he burned: for the same man was indeed a man of good desire ^h. Therefore, when he was delighted beyond what can be told with the progress [\] and the purpose of those same monks advancing according to the rule, and greatly rejoiced in their careful vigil in the Lord [\], it happened that those same venerable monks, inflamed with the love of God, humbly demanded of him [\] the relics of the aforesaid holy martyrs Florentinus and Hilary, that they might be able to translate them to their own monastery whence they had come, being about to bestow a very great pledge on their brethren ⁱ.

[4] But what would they not obtain from the charity of a man in whose charity he himself found rest? and they obtain some relics, He gave them the chief part of the holy bodies, and acted with pious charity, so that both a part — nay, the whole — should remain to him, and a part — nay, likewise the whole — should be rendered to the brethren; and it came about that the reverend brethren carried with them to Bonneval saint Florentinus and saint Hilary whole, and the holy abbot who had given them retained blessed Florentinus and blessed Hilary whole for himself and his monastery ^k. Therefore, when the bearers of the holy Florentinus and Hilary had gone forward some distance from Athanacum and from the city, at last on the second day, when for the sake of rest they had halted in the same neighbourhood at a church of the blessed Virgin Mary [\], God worked miracles in his Martyrs, so that of what merit they were with God [\] should be shown outwardly to men.

[5] A girl vexed by a demon began to cry out with horrible voices: which are made famous by many miracles Florentinus and Hilary, I scarcely escaped when I went out from Lyons; why do you persecute me here [\] again? And when she was gnashing with these cries, at last on the third day she was healed by the help of the Martyrs, and thus, rejoicing for her own salvation, mingled with the choirs she sang Kyrie eleison*. Then with a prosperous journey they come to Orleans ^l; and because the Lord's day was at hand, on the Sabbath they turned aside to the church of the holy confessor Anianus ^m, where I have believed I should briefly relate what Christ the Lord wrought through his Saints.

[6] wrought on the journey A certain man weak in his whole body and moreover dumb for one year, Salomon by name, full of faith, sought the help of the Martyrs, prayed, and presently departed whole. A like thing was done in the case of Romanus, whose limbs had been drawn together for some years, and who had lain before the doors of the basilica of saint Peter the apostle for nearly six years. I shall record Anstrudis, a woman paralysed on the right side. She came with great confidence, and forthwith departed whole. And a little boy too, named Rodulf, when he had a weak [\] right arm, as soon as he was presented to the Martyrs by his parents, straightway deserved the health he sought. There Lupus, a boy blind from birth, three years old, found the light. And a certain woman too, named Romana, infirm for XII [\] years, when she implored the merit of the Martyrs, obtained health. Martinus, a boy blind from birth, six years old, and Balduina, blind from eight years, having obtained the grace of sight, rendered glory to God [\]. Behold how wonderfully God, the worker of every creature, works in his Saints ⁿ, that by visible miracles he may move the minds of men to seek and to find [\] the invisible! But neither would I pass thee by, Ozanna [\], a girl weak in the knee of her body, prostrate in the knee of her heart: thou didst implore the mercy of the Martyrs, and presently didst bear away health from the merits of the Saints. Old Eligius, a minister [\] of the house of the salvation-bringing Cross ^o, on which Christ hung for our salvation, when he was held with his limbs drawn together, came with the help of his own to implore the aid of the Martyrs, sent his faith to the Lord [\*], asked for health, and bore away soundness from the power of the Martyrs.

[7] made famous by miracles While these and like astounding things were done for the peoples, the venerable limbs of the Martyrs are lifted up from the city [p]. There is a countless concourse of the people; the crowds ran together from every side, proclaiming glory to Christ. Whose, O Lord, are these things, unless thine, who to those who are put to death for thee dost repay glory with an eternal name? In one day of walking the relics of the Saints were carried to a church bearing the memory of blessed Sebastian the martyr [q]. Hither came a weak woman, and another woman likewise, who for a year had lain in bed with pain of the kidneys. Both return [\] whole and eager. And here was the meeting with the venerable abbot of the monastery of Bonneval, who, hearing that so great benefits and miracles were being done through the Martyrs by the gift of almighty God, went forth with a holy company of monks to receive [\] those holy relics. Already they were being carried, with the choirs singing together and sounding forth praise to Christ, with crosses going before and lights shining ahead, and suddenly at the doors of blessed Andrew the apostle [r] a woman named Bertha, wretched with blindness for XII years [s], was enlightened while those who were present looked on.

[8] in the church of Bonneval Then with the highest exultation and a company of psalm-singers the venerable bones of the Martyrs were carried down to a basilica, not yet dedicated, which was two miles distant from the monastery; where what he wrought through his Saints who says: Without me you can do nothing, I shall briefly comprise, that I may take away the reader's weariness. Leutfredus, a blind man, and a certain woman also blind for three years, escaped the calamity of so great a misfortune. When a certain man deprived of sight lay beside this church, and those passing by told him that he should offer himself as quickly as possible to the service of the Saints, being enlightened in an instant — I believe because he had approached with faith — he suddenly cried out: Thanks be to God, behold I now see. Moreover the venerable Lord's day followed; when a more famous and more solemn concourse is made in all the world to the Sacraments of Christ, with the confidence of the people, in church. On which sacred day the venerable abbot of the aforesaid monastery of Bonneval brought it about that the relics of the Saints should be carried to the same monastery, a countless multitude of people following and going with them. And as soon as they were lifted up from that same church, presently a certain boy received sight; and when, the choirs already resounding, they were far from the house [t], Anastasia, feeble in her right hand, marvelled that health had suddenly come to her, with the people looking on. Adalbert [\], unhappily deprived of his eyes, and Odolendis [\] too, pitiable with the same affliction, and also Amalberga and Benegildis [\], likewise disfigured with a similar affliction, while they press upon the service of the Saints with faithful mind, rejoice that they have escaped the darkness of blindness, and honour [\] God blessed in his Saints with such voices and gestures as they can.

[9] Thence the bones of the Saints are brought into the church dedicated in the merits of blessed Sabinus, they are laid up, and continue to shine with benefits. and the Martyrs are laid, as was fitting, upon the altar [u]. There was present a woman deprived of her eyes for five years; there were present Balterius, a blind man, and Christiana, unsightly with a like affliction; and Wymerna [x] too, three years old, with limbs drawn together, in whom the power of almighty God powerfully exhibited its strength for the proclaiming of the Martyrs' merits. Many other things besides which [\] the divine power has wrought and works I pass over, lest I produce nausea in the reader rather than the pleasantness of fruit [\]. But I believe that these few out of many will more fully kindle the mind of a good man and an emulator of piety to the praise of almighty God, to the merits of the Martyrs [y], and will more fervently and more perseveringly inflame him to become a partaker also of the merits of those whose wonders he hears, and of eternal glory; and that until he escape the valley of tears and weeping he will set ascensions in his heart, and by the imitation of the Saints will pass over [\*] from virtue to virtue; until, crowned for his deeds, he may deserve to see the God of gods in Sion.

[10] Being overcome by the prayers [z] of the Saints, to the praise of almighty God, they continue to shine. after I had first set down the miracles already done, I have subjoined these things in brief. A certain Gaudius, ten years of age, bent from his mother's womb and wholly contracted, received health by the help of the Martyrs. A boy named Hildrad, seven years old, when he was sick in his limbs and hindered in his legs from walking, was admonished in a dream that his mother should carry candles to the memorial of the Martyrs together with that same son; it was done: the mother returned glad with her son healed. Nor shall I pass thee by, child of Amalgarius: when his father had brought him, blind for three years, presently he beheld in his son's eyes, by the prayers of the Martyrs, what he had wished for. A girl dumb and likewise deaf from her mother's womb, pressing with her mother upon the vigils of the night for the recovery of health, when by the power of the Martyrs she heard the voice of the cock crowing, said: Thanks be to God, that I rejoice, having obtained what I hoped for. Bertohildis, blind and deaf for XVI years, returned healed and enlightened from the memorials of the Martyrs. A like thing came by God's gift to a certain woman blind from years past. A certain little child, as was thought five years old, whose heels clung bound to his buttocks, almost as soon as he was carried to the doors of the oratory, having experienced by the intercession of the Saints the use of his feet and limbs, lived sound. And Martinus too by name, ten years old, contracted from the cradle, publishes everywhere in his walking the power of the Saints. Nor would I pass by two women weak by a like lot, who, when they had long lain — because, I believe, of their lesser faith — at the memorial of the Martyrs, at last deserved to be healed and to find the use of their limbs. Many are the things which Christ our Lord daily works through his Servants, to whose glory whosoever desires to come, let him so wonder at the miracles visibly done that he cease not rather to imitate their life unto eternal recompense.

ANNOTATIONS.

PART II.

Another part of the relics, As the days came on ^a, the venerable abbot of the monastery of saint Martin ^b, where the bodies of the saints Florentinus and Hylarius had for some time been reverently kept, with certain brethren privy to it, willed that they should be carried in silence to the place which is called Saxiacus, into the church of blessed Christopher the martyr, until a fitting burial should be prepared for them in the house which was being built for them ^c, and a famous translation should make the day [\]. And so, as they were being carried thither and were now near the church of the perpetual Virgin Mary at the villa of Movio [\], there met them a certain woman possessed by a demon, who for three years had had an unclean spirit, who, when she had been brought near to the biers of the Saints, straightway, the unclean spirit being put to flight, departed made whole; she herself was called Odila: a miracle done by many in a well-known person ^d.

[12] carried from Athanacum to Saxiacum, They had now come, bearing the memorials of the Saints, near waters roofed over on both sides of the bank with slime and sedge ^e, which they commonly name carusium; and behold two brothers, both blind, are drawn by the hands of others to the limbs of the Saints, by night, persons of note ^f: these, enlightened by the intercession of the Saints, the light suddenly restored to sight: and those who had come led by others return home with unhurt foot, giving thanks to God. And so when the bones of the Saints, having been carried into the church of the Virgin Mary in the villa which they name Treco [\*], had been laid down a little while, a woman long labouring with an unclean spirit was healed: and she was a person not unknown ^g.

[13] likewise by various It came to pass that those who bore such most illustrious martyr-relics ^h, the space of the journey being completed, came to the place whither they had determined to carry them: where a certain woman of the household of the place, most unhappy in the kind of her affliction, with her limbs so trembling that scarcely one aspect of the place could hold her, when she had lain down before the most blessed confession of the Saints, presently grew strong with a sound body, and ardently, as she was able, paid her vows to God for her health. This was done in the basilica of Christopher the martyr, where among the other miracles an exceedingly notable and astounding miracle appeared in those days.

[14] miracles There was then being kept the festival of blessed Laurence the martyr. There were there two most venerable monks, religiously serving God in the church of Christopher the martyr ⁱ: one of these, Heldegaudus a presbyter, when he was performing Mass, offered in a glass chalice ^k, in which he purposely left a very small [\] part of the precious Body and Blood of our redemption for those departing this life ^l, and set it upon the altar and arranged it. And so at evening time, forgetful of the deed, when he came incautiously to strip the altar of its day-cloth, as he moved his hand and drew the cloth, the glass chalice, falling downward, was broken. The monk, seeing the deed, pined away so sadly, chiefly because of the sacred Blood, and thus withdrawing, his eyes suffused with tears, laid himself indeed [\] on his bed.

[15] The other of the monks, named Adraldus, when he had learned the deed by sight, gathering all the fragments of the chalice from the pavement, full of faith as I believe, laid them at the head of saint Florentinus the martyr. That very day was the festival of saint Laurence: wonderful to tell! The chalice was found so entirely whole that no consolidation of the fractures appeared; the witnesses are men not obscure, who afterwards saw that repaired chalice, which even now is kept under diligent care to commend so famous a miracle. These things are thine, O Lord, who so console the sadness of thine own that thou also glorifiest thy Saints with miracles. Not many days after, a certain woman, who was contracted in her whole body and dumb for some years, after she had been brought before the bodies of the Saints, being full of faith, departed whole and sound. Another, who has the name Christina, and whom an unclean spirit had made most wretched in all her limbs, is presented by her parents at the memorials of the Saints, who, being presently healed, returns strong and whole, and rendering thanks to God for her soundness until now she is shown whole ^m, to whom be honour and glory through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.