Annemundus

ON ST. ANNEMUNDUS, BISHOP OF LYONS AND MARTYR,

CALLED ALSO DALFINUS, IN THE TERRITORY OF CHALON IN GAUL

About DCLIX.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Annemundus, otherwise Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons, martyr, in the territory of Chalon in Gaul. (S.)

BY J. P.

§ I. The memory of the Saint in several Martyrologies; his different appellation among French and English writers; the error thence arising, and from a corrupt text of Bede, of those who thought there were two different bishops; refutation of the arguments brought forward to the contrary.

[ ] However much the memory of this holy Prelate has been made famous both by the ancient and (as will appear) never interrupted veneration of the people of Lyons, His memory in ancient calendars of particular churches and by the testimonies of ancient and most excellent writers, even foreign ones, concerning his deeds and death; nevertheless his name is read inscribed in none of the classical Martyrologies. But concerning the private sacred Calendars of the diocese of Lyons, Jacques Sévert relates these things in his Chronologia historica archiepiscoporum Lugdunensium, p. 150: In all the books of Martyrologies which are entitled "On the veneration of the Saints existing in the city of Lyons," as much in the collegiate churches as in the regular ones, these words are contained: "On the fourth Kalends of October, the birthday of blessed Annemundus, bishop of Lyons and martyr of Christ. Now this Martyr rests in the same city at St. Peter's on this side of the Saône." The same thing is confirmed by the often to be cited Pierre-François Chifflet, priest of the Society of Jesus, in the manuscript Notices about St. Annemundus transmitted hither, where, among the churches of the city and territory of Lyons in whose ancient Martyrologies he asserts that these things are read everywhere in the same sense, though sometimes differing in a few strokes, he expressly names the churches of St. Stephen, St. Irenæus, and St. Justus, and adds these words: That he had read it thus in the old Martyrology of the church of Aëre in the diocese of Belley is testified by John, by the patience of God bishop of Belley, in letters given on the VI Kalends of June, MCCLIV: "On the fourth Kalends of October, at Lyons, of Annemundus, bishop and martyr, who rests in the church of blessed Peter of the nuns: to whose body many sick coming, through prayers, God working, are there cured of the disease which is called the falling sickness."

[2] At length he obtained a place in some published Calendars of more recent writers. & inscribed in some more recent Calendars. Ferrari in his General Catalogue of the Saints thus set him down at this day: At Chalon in Gaul, of St. Annemundus, bishop of Lyons and martyr. Castellanus likewise in his General Martyrology: Near Chalon on the Saône, of St. Enemundus, bishop of Lyons, slain by order of Ebroin. Saussay in the Gallican: Among the Ædui beyond Chalon, the birthday of St. Ennemundus, surnamed Dalphinus, bishop of Lyons, there cut down for justice's sake, and so on. Finally the Paris martyrologist: Near Chalon, of St. Annemundus, bishop of Lyons, impiously slain by the emissaries of Ebroin. His name is uttered in French as S. Chaumond, and, as Castellanus advises, near Autun as S. Yrmond; in Latin there is greater variety: for there is found also Anemundus, Aonemundus, Aunemundus, Cannemundus, Chanemundus, Unemundus and Munemundus. He is called Annemundus in the first catalogue of the bishops of Lyons in Chifflet's Paulinus illustratus, p. 83, but Aonemundus there in the second and third catalogues; the first appellation, although Mabillon, without giving a reason, calls it corrupt, I have judged should be retained, not only because among more recent writers it is by far the commoner, but because the Acts themselves favour it; as do the Saint's own precept for the monastery of St. Peter of Lyons, and the letter of Leidrad to Charlemagne — records to be more fully designated in their place.

[3] The holy Prelate's other name, or, as Saussay judged, the English called him Dalfinus, the French Annemundus. surname, Dalfinus, opened to the writers of the last century a wider field for disputation. The dispute has just now been decided, and therefore it will suffice to set forth its cause and manner by relating them. It is to be noted, therefore, first, that Eddius Stephanus, the venerable Bede, Fridegodus, Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, and other English writers in the Acts of St. Wilfrid, bishop of York, attributed to our Saint — whom the French everywhere call Annemundus or Aunemundus and so on, as we have said — the name of Dalfinus alone. It is to be noted secondly that the martyrdom of St. Dalfinus, at which St. Wilfrid is said to have been present, is placed in the earlier editions of the venerable Bede under queen Brunichild. Hence the most eminent Baronius in his Annals, without further examination, referred the death of Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons, to the year 614. Baronius was followed by Jacques Sévert in both editions of his Chronologia historica of the prelates of Lyons; and although he confesses that no place is given to Dalfinus in the Catalogues, he nevertheless places him midway between the bishops Secundinus and Chagnoald. There were added Jean Chenu in his Series of the archbishops and Théophile Raynaud in the Indiculus of the Saints of Lyons, which he published in print in the year 1619.

[4] Some thought there were two different men, The same three French authors, since it was certainly established from elsewhere that Annemundus sat at Lyons in the reign of Clovis II, and was killed under queen St. Bathildis, regent of the kingdom for her son Clothaire III — and they could not deny him a place — accordingly placed him after the middle of the seventh century, as though a different man from Dalfinus. Nor yet altogether without any scruple: for Sévert, whom Raynaud imitated with altered phrasing, has these words in both editions: Here arises a controversy which deserves to be settled. The old Breviary of the archiepiscopal chamber (as also the biographer in our manuscripts) thrusts another name upon this Primate (Annemundus) with this note: "Therefore I shall set forth the Life of Dalfinus, or of the blessed martyr Annemundus." On which passage a few were of opinion that Dalphinus the archbishop was not to be written of by us separately above, so that he and St. Annemundus should make two primates; but that more truly these names designated one and the same person. But we are compelled to attribute names of this sort to two distinct Archbishops. Chiefly because we are invited to this by the differences of times and of queens who gave their assent to the martyrdoms. For Dalfinus suffered death at the command of Brunichild, under Clothaire II king of the Franks, in the year DCXIV. But St. Annemundus died about the year DCLXVII, another queen, Balthildis, consenting to this slaying, under Clovis II king; which queen the Breviary of the chamber even names.

[5] the one slain under Brunichild, the other under Bathildis; Raynaud in the Indiculus more rightly denies that Annemundus was slain with queen Bathildis consenting; but he deduces his distinction from Dalfinus not only from the diversity of the times and princes under whom they are recorded to have suffered, but also from the manner and place of the passion: Dalfinus, he says, underwent the same hazard as St. Desiderius, in the time and by the order of queen Brunichild, being beheaded at Lyons, about the year, as I was saying, DCXII. But St. Enemundus in the reign of Clovis II, about fifty years after the death of Brunichild, about the year of Christ DCLXVII. But to the difficulty drawn from the Breviary or the Acts he answered thus: Granted that St. Enemundus also was surnamed Dalfinus,

as those Acts signify: perhaps from this, that he suffered from a like cause to that from which his predecessor Dalfinus suffered. In this state, unless I am mistaken, our Bolland found the question, when the Acts of St. Bathildis the queen came to be elucidated at the day XXVI January, and on that occasion he undertook to discuss it more deeply.

[6] but it is an error, born of a corrupt text of Bede; What moved Bolland to do this was the savage judgment of William of Malmesbury upon Bathildis, who not only imputes to this holy queen the death of Dalfinus, but rends her as a woman driven by infernal furies. For that reason he devoted the whole fifth paragraph of his Preliminary Commentary to that question: Whether the slaying of St. Annemundus or Delfinus was procured by Bathildis. And first indeed, in order to set forth the state of the question clearly to the reader, he brings forward the text of William of Malmesbury from book 3 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of the English, in which the slaying of Dalfinus is ascribed to Bathildis; then the words from the then common copies of Bede, book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, chap. 20, where the slaying of Dalfinus is attributed to Brunechild. Then — what I have already done in few words — he sets forth at greater length, and by reciting their very words, the opinions of Cardinal Baronius, Jacques Sévert, Jean Chenu, and Théophile Raynaud, who adhere to the common text of Bede, and finally he subjoins: But if those most learned men had read that whole chapter of Bede accurately, they would easily have understood that there is a corruption in the common copies of Bede, in which the name of Brunichild was written for that of Baldechild by some smatterer of a copyist, who, since he knew that the slaying of pious prelates was foreign to the most kindly character of Bathildis, attributed it rather to Brunichild — deceived perhaps also by the affinity of the name, or by the contraction of the letters by which the name was expressed.

[7] Now that Brunichild had been intruded for Baldechild or Bathildis into the then common copies of Bede into which Brunichild crept in place of Bathildis. could have been perceived by those reading the whole chapter, Bolland shows from the age of St. Wilfrid, who, on the testimony of Bede and of his other biographers, was present at the martyrdom of Dalfinus. Bede there testifies, so Bolland goes on, that St. Wilfrid was sent to Rome by Ercombert king of Kent along with St. Benedict Biscop; that after he returned he was joined in friendship with king Aldfrid, son of Oswy; that he was afterwards consecrated bishop by Agilbert, then bishop of Paris, when he was thirty years old: that he passed forty-five years in the episcopate; that he died in that year in which Coenred king of the Mercians, and Offa son of Sigher king of the East Saxons, departed from Britain toward Rome, Constantine holding the Pontificate, who in the year DCCVIII on the VII of March succeeded Sisinnius. Florence of Worcester writes that Wilfrid's death occurred in the year of Christ DCCIX; whence it follows that he was consecrated in the year DCLXIV, and born in the year DCXXXIV, the twenty-first from the murder of Brunechild. After a few words he uncovers a serious slip of memory or of pen in Jean Chenu, who relates the death of Dalfinus: then Raynaud too is mistaken, he says, though more lightly, when he says that Baronius asserts the martyrdom of St. Dalfinus from the writers of Gallican affairs; whereas Baronius cites Bede alone, and not in the year DCXII but in the year DCXIV; nor do the manner and place of the passion of Dalfinus and Annemundus differ, as he says: for Bede does not write that Delfinus was killed at Lyons. Nor finally was Annemundus killed while Clovis II reigned, but under his son Clothaire with his mother. Then he subjoins other things from which he deduces that Bede's Dalfinus is the same as Annemundus, killed indeed while Bathildis reigned, but — as he contends by the reasons brought forward — without her being privy to the crime. Before we touch upon this matter, it will be worth while to hear what reception the Bollandist critique set forth thus far had among the learned.

[8] It stung, above all, Théophile Raynaud, but it did not bring it about Raynaud clung to the error, that he changed his opinion. For in the second edition of his Indiculus, produced in the year 1662, repeating what he had related in the first about Dalfinus, he subjoins these words: Thus I wrote, following Bede and Baronius. But lately Jean Bolland, at the Life of St. Bathildis, has marked Bede with a corruption in this part, and me with manifold wandering; with how much right, I sift in my Syntagma on my own books, in revising this lucubration. The alleged Syntagma came to light in the year 1669 under Raynaud's name, although I somewhat doubt whether it is his genuine little work: the reasons for doubting I shall presently give. In that little work, then, at p. 32, either he himself or another for him repeats his assertions about Dalfinus in the Indiculus, and subjoins Bolland's censures upon them; not, however, everywhere quite accurately, as when he says that according to Bolland Bede was mistaken, the name of Brunichild being intruded for the name of Bathildis or Baldechild. For Bolland there did not mark Bede with the mistake, but the smatterer who corrupted Bede.

[9] Then the author of the Syntagma brings forward reasons by which he professes to be confirmed in his own opinion, and contends that the heap of his wanderings is much diminished, and afterwards tried to defend him against Bolland and begins thus: For that I separated St. Dalfinus from St. Ennemundus, I did adhering to Baronius, in whom, abridged and — by his own order — in not a few respects otherwise arranged as to the series of the years than in the Annals at large, I read at the year DCXII that others besides Bede (and who, pray, but the treaters of Gallican affairs?) acknowledge the martyrdom of St. Dalfinus; and that indeed as of a particular Saint distinct from St. Ennemundus. The same has Sévert in his series of the prelates of Lyons, and Pierre Bullioud in his Notes on the Life of St. Triverius, num. 2. And so that heap of my wanderings, so minutely and diligently noted, decreases. These things, so far as I understand, are meant to wash away those points in which Bolland had specifically warned that Raynaud was mistaken, in the words I gave at num. 7, and above all in Cardinal Baronius's being wrongly cited by Raynaud. That is to say, when Bolland read Baronius cited at the year 612, he ought not to have understood the Annals of Baronius themselves, but the Epitome of those Annals drawn up by Spondanus. Let the author of the Syntagma believe this, for all I care. Let us meanwhile see what after all Spondanus has in the abridged Baronius at the said year 612: In which same year Desiderius bishop of Vienne, and A LITTLE AFTER Delphinus bishop of Lyons, by the work of the same impious Brunichild (as the same author and others relate), being cut off by a cruel death, attained martyrdom. Is it rightly deduced from this what Raynaud relates in the Indiculus: His (Dalfinus's) martyrdom is acknowledged and fixed by Cardinal Baronius, from the writers of Gallican affairs, in the year of Christ DCXII, and is touched upon by Bede just cited*? To me at least it does not seem so.

[10] by arguments. Spondanus, in referring the martyrdom of St. Desiderius to the year 612, at the same time — as happens in compendia of histories — makes mention of St. Dalfinus, because he read in Baronius that he was killed by the same Brunichild; not because he judged that he died at the same time, as he sufficiently indicates by the particles a little after, much less because he wished Baronius to be corrected; since in the margin he cites Baronius himself as his authority at the years 612, namely for Desiderius, and 614 for Dalfinus. But what Spondanus adds — as the same author (Bede) and others relate — regards not only what is said of Dalfinus, but chiefly what is said of Desiderius, as is clear from the margin, where he assigns those others, namely Ado, the Roman Martyrology, and Baronius. For Ado and the Roman Martyrology do in fact treat of Desiderius, of Dalfinus nowhere. The Bollandist censure therefore remains true: Raynaud… is mistaken when he says that Baronius asserts the martyrdom of St. Dalfinus from the writers of Gallican affairs, whereas Baronius cites Bede alone, and not in the year DCXII but in the year DCXIV. Nor accordingly does the heap of Raynaud's wanderings decrease, since for the rest, in which Bolland said that he was specifically mistaken, the author of the Syntagma brings nothing forward. But he says, the same has Sévert… and Pierre Bullioud. So it is; they too set down Dalfinus under Brunichild as distinct from Annemundus. What then? Does the heap of wanderings decrease from that? Or is he perhaps not mistaken who follows others in their error?

[11] whose feebleness Meanwhile Bolland's adversary confidently continues: And it decreases much more, if there be rejected (as surely to more than one it will seem it must be rejected) the fact that by Bolland, AGAINST THE FAITH OF ALL THE CODICES, Brunichild in Bede — a savage woman covered with every infamous mark — is transformed into St. Bathildis. How not lightly the good man is here mistaken will be taught by the vast series of more correct codices of Bede, presently to be exhibited, in which Bathildis is read, not Brunichildis. Here the same author inserts an answer to another opinion of Bolland contrary to Raynaud, but less connected with the present matter, and more fitly to be examined below along with the answer; and finally he argues thus: Wherefore there remains the single charge of drowsiness, fastened both on Baronius and on others along with me, for not having read through the whole chapter of Bede. Nay rather, I did read it through and unrolled the whole chapter not drowsily; and yet I did not detect, nor even now do I detect in Bede, anything that compels one to confess that Delfinus is the same as Ennemundus. And so it plainly appears that Bolland did not read that chapter of Bede entire, or read it carelessly; otherwise he would have seen that there is nothing in the rest of the chapter that would make for this matter, nor would he have charged Baronius and the others adhering to him with a lapse for not having fully read that chapter of Bede. Thus he; and if he wrote these things as sincerely as confidently, he may seem more worthy of compassion than of refutation.

[12] Further, that he might not seem to have replied nothing to the age of St. Wilfrid urged by Bolland, is uncovered, as by no means agreeing with the age of Brunechild, he attacks in general the reckonings of Florence of Worcester, by whom Bolland had said Wilfrid's death was attached to the year 709, and, as though the business were done, From these things it is had, he says, that Florence's chronology is not so accurate and certain that on its account Bede should be cast aside, or marked with a blunder, without any other argument than what is drawn from Florence's authority. As though forsooth Bolland had upheld Wilfrid's age, as by no means agreeing with the age of Brunechild, from Florence's authority, and not from the chronological notes assigned by Bede himself, from which he shows that St. Wilfrid was ordained bishop when he was about thirty years old, and that after forty-five years from receiving the episcopate he closed his last day, in the same year in which Coinred king of the Mercians and Offa, son of Sigher king of the East Saxons, left Britain, namely in the fourth year of the reign of Osred,… Constantine holding the Pontificate: which are all Bede's own words, taken from the same chapter 20, and so evidently making for the matter that whoever, after reading it through and unrolling the whole chapter not drowsily, denies it, betrays himself as blind in broad daylight.

[13] Osred, on the death of his father Alfred, king of the Northumbrians, he tried to defend succeeded to the reign, as the same Bede testifies in the preceding chapter, in the seven hundred and fifth year of the Lord's Incarnation; the fourth year, therefore, of his reign — in which Coinred left Britain and Wilfrid died — is rightly fixed by Bede's reckonings at 709 of Christ, which same year he also expressly states in the chronological Recapitulation of the whole Work, as follows: In the year DCCVIIII Coenred king of the Mercians, after he had reigned five years, sets out for Rome.* Hence gather first how preposterously the patron of a desperate cause has reprehended

the chronology of Florence — which in this place at least rests so openly on Bede's authority, was handed down in the Annals from Bede by Baronius himself (whom he defends against Bolland), and is to this day admitted without hesitation by the learned. Gather secondly how rightly Bolland, subtracting from the year 709 the 45 years which Bede assigns to St. Wilfrid's episcopate, and another 30, which the same Bede writes that he counted of age when he was consecrated — how rightly, I say, Bolland fixed Wilfrid's birth in the year 634, and thence concluded that the martyrdom of St. Dalfinus, at which Wilfrid, according to Bede and all the rest of Wilfrid's biographers, was present, cannot be placed under Brunechild, inasmuch as she was taken from among the living many years before Wilfrid was born, but under Baldechild or Bathildis, for whose name in the published copies of Bede the name of Brunechild was written by a smatterer. And in this indeed Bolland has won followers among all the learned I have seen who have handled that matter since the Syntagma published under Raynaud's name.

[14] either he himself or another for him. Bolland's opinion is confirmed I say under Raynaud's name, because, since in that whole disputation against Bolland I find nothing at all of Raynaud's judgment, learning and wisdom, I somewhat doubt whether it had him for its author in the form in which it was published. There is added that the twentieth volume of his Works, which they call the Apopompæus, and in which the said Syntagma holds the first place, was arranged by an anonymous hand only in the sixth year after Raynaud's death, and published at Cracow, as it professes, without the approval of the Superiors of the Society; whence the Society does not acknowledge it as a legitimate offspring, as Nathanael Southwell advises in the Bibliotheca of the Writers of the same Society, p. 759, where he reviews Raynaud's Works. Bolland did not see that Syntagma in which he is assailed as an accuser, having died about four years before its publication; nevertheless, on account of Raynaud's complaint recited above from the Indiculus, and to confirm his own judgment about the intrusion of the name Brunechild for Baldechild or Bathildis, he noted the following in his collectanea for the Acts of St. Annemundus or Dalfinus: When we published the January volume, we had seen only three editions of the History written by Bede — the Basel one of MDLXIV, the Paris one of MDLXXXIII, the Cologne one of MDCI — and no manuscript copy. But in the very year MDCXLIII in which we were publishing ours, the same History of Bede appeared, printed at Cambridge in England, collated chiefly with three Latin manuscripts and purged of corruptions; and the same, once elegantly expounded in a Saxon paraphrase by Alfred king of the Anglo-Saxons, and collated also with three Saxon manuscripts. We obtained it not long after, and have often used it since. Now in that chapter XX of book V it stands thus: "For queen Balthild, sending soldiers, ordered the bishop to be killed." He who prepared the edition notes in the margin that in the manuscript of the college of the Most Holy Trinity at Cambridge it has Baldhild. In Alfred's Paraphrase it is likewise Balthild. So that it can seem not at all doubtful that Bede so wrote, and that the report of Dalfinus's slaying, commanded by Bathildis, was spread through the world. That Cambridge edition, together with Bolland's judgment on this matter, in all likelihood roused more recent scholars to consult also, if they had any, the manuscript codices of Bede. Among these, Pierre-François Chifflet, priest of the Society of Jesus, having obtained from the library of St. Maximin of Trier a manuscript codex of venerable antiquity, as he says in his preface, printed Bede's History in the year 1681 from it, collated with several other manuscript codices. Now here at p. 289 is read: For Baldid, the rest as in the Cambridge edition; but in the Notes at p. 325 Chifflet advises that in the Thuanus codex and that of St.-Germain-des-Prés it has Balthid. Mabillon, in the second Benedictine Sæculum, p. 777: All the ancient books, he says, and the Saxon version of Bede made by king Alfred, present Balthildis. Pagi in his Critica at the year 658: The passage of Bede is therefore to be corrected from the Latin-Saxon or Cambridge edition, from Chifflet's, and from the various manuscripts cited by learned men — to which are to be added five of the Colbert library read by me, in which, in place of Brunechild, there stands Balthild, or Bathilde, or Baldhid, or Balthid, or Baltid. Michael Alford in his Annals of the Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. 2, p. 286: This slip therefore ought to be corrected either by manuscript codices, or by the ancient printed copies of Bede. My manuscript has it thus: "For queen Baldhild," etc. And so without doubt that passage is to be read. For copies printed once at Strasbourg a hundred and forty years ago (that volume of Alford was published in the year 1663) read in almost the same way: "Queen Balthild, sending soldiers, ordered the Bishop to be killed."

[15] These things will suffice, I think, for the reader to perceive that it was asserted too precipitately by the author of the Syntagma by irrefragable documents. that Bolland wished Bathildis to be substituted for Brunechild in Bede against the faith of all the codices. Let there now be added, by way of a corollary, the testimonies of other ancient writers, whence it may be established that Dalfinus's martyrdom occurred under queen Bathildis. Eddius Stephanus, the intimate and contemporary of St. Wilfrid (as I shall show in the following §), in his Life of the same, published from the Salisbury manuscript codex by Thomas Gale in the year 1691, writes thus in chap. 6: A queen by the name of Balcthild… ordered bishops to be killed, of whom one is Dalfinus. Fridegodus, who before the middle of the tenth century described the Life of the same Wilfrid in heroic metre, also has Balthild in Mabillon, part 1 of the third Benedictine Sæculum, p. 175; the anonymous biographer of Wilfrid in Capgrave's Legenda of the Saints of England, printed at London in the year 1516, has Batildis; William of Malmesbury agrees, as was said above; and finally Hugh, abbot of Flavigny, in the Verdun Chronicle in Labbe, vol. 1 of the Bibliotheca of Manuscripts, p. 102, in words most likely taken from Bede, as follows: Balthildis, sending soldiers, killed Dalfinus bishop of Lyons. For the rest, that I should draw these things out at greater length than would otherwise be necessary was demanded by a just defence of Bolland.

* Bede.

* others, six.

§ II. Some deeds of the Saint written down by Eddius, Bede, and other English writers; likewise his Acts by an anonymous Frenchman; his martyrdom under queen St. Bathildis, but without her knowledge or against her will.

[ ] The deeds of the Saint, in which his slaying Since in the preceding § it has been abundantly proved that St. Dalfinus's martyrdom must be fixed in the times of queen Bathildis, just reason demands that we set forth in what way the learned excuse this most pious woman from his slaying, being about afterwards to trace out how it came about that the man whom the French everywhere call Annemundus was named Dalfinus by the English — for that he is one and the same, all now likewise acknowledge. But that we may carry this out the more easily and in better order, there must first be set forth what is related to that purpose by the ancient English, and then by the French. Among the English we here give the first place to Eddius Stephanus, the biographer of St. Wilfrid, about whom the venerable Bede relates the following in book 4, chap. 2 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation: But also the modes of singing in church, which up to that time they had known only in Kent, from this time they began to learn throughout all the churches of the English: and the first master of singing to the churches of the Northumbrians, excepting James (of whom we spoke above), was Eddi, surnamed Stephen, invited from Kent by the most reverend man Wilfrid, who was the first among the bishops who were of the English nation to learn to hand on to the churches of the English the Catholic manner of living. Hence it is clear that Eddius was Wilfrid's contemporary; but that he was also his intimate and his inseparable companion he himself discloses in various places of the Life of Wilfrid, which see cited in Mabillon, part 1 of the fourth Sæculum of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict.

[17] by English writers, Further, the said biographer in Gale's edition, having narrated St. Wilfrid's arrival in the city of Lyons as he journeyed from Britain to Rome, thus begins chapter 4 of the Life: Blessed be God, who defends and protects his servants, and will help them by the aid of good men. For in the aforesaid city (Lyons) there was Dalfinus the archbishop, of holy memory, who set his eyes for good upon the servant of God, the most gentle Wilfrid, and had kindly received him with his companions into his hospitality, seeing in his serene face that he bore a blessed mind. And therefore he made all things necessary abound for them, as though they were his own, and wished to choose him for his own adopted son, saying to him: "If you will remain with me in confidence, I will give you a good part of the Gauls to govern in the world, and the virgin daughter of my brother as your wife, and I will hold you as my adopted son, and you shall have me as a Father faithfully helping you in all things." And St. Wilfrid, the servant of God, answering wisely, as he had been taught, said: "There are my vows to the Lord, which I shall pay, leaving, like Abraham, my kindred and my father's house, that I may visit the Apostolic See, and may learn the rules of ecclesiastical discipline for the increase of our nation in serving the Lord, desiring to receive from God what he promised to those who love him, saying: 'He who shall have left father or mother' and the rest 'shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life.' For now, life attending and God helping, if I live, I shall return again and see your face." The holy Bishop, hearing these and other things, understood that he was truly a servant of God and imbued with the Holy Spirit: and preparing for him what was necessary, he sent him forth in the peace of Christ, according to his will, with guides and with means, to the Apostolic See.

[18] and in particular by Eddius Stephanus In chapter 5 he embraces St. Wilfrid's journey and his doings at Rome, until he conveniently came again to his father the Archbishop from Lyons, a city of Gaul; then he continues thus in chap. 6: Finding therefore Dalfinus the archbishop safe and sound, the son enters rejoicing to the Father, and Wilfrid the servant of God narrated to him in order all the happiness of his journey. And the Bishop gave thanks to God, that the Lord had kept his son unharmed both in going and in returning again. For he remained together with him for three years, and learned many things from very learned teachers, and love grew more and more between them. For Wilfrid the servant of God, coveting it with desire, gladly received from the holy archbishop Dalfinus the form of the tonsure of Peter the apostle, in the manner of the crown of thorns that girded the head of Christ. The Saint, placing his hands upon his head, was thinking in his heart to have him as his heir after himself, if God had so willed; for God was providing something better for our nation. For at that time a malevolent queen by the name of Balcthild persecuted the Church of the Lord. As the most impious queen Jezebel, who killed the prophets of the Lord, so she, apart from priests and deacons, ordered nine bishops to be killed: of whom one is that bishop Dalfinus, whom the commanders most malignantly ordered to come to them. But he, with undaunted mind, not knowing what was to befall him, came to the place of the contest, and with him at the same time St. Wilfrid the servant of God, though the bishop forbade it, who said rejoicing: "Nothing is better for us than that Father and son together

should die and be with Christ." For now the holy bishop was crowned with martyrdom. But when St. Wilfrid, stripped and likewise undaunted, stood ready for the palm of martyrdom, the commanders asked, saying: "Who is that comely youth, who prepares himself for death?" And it was said to them: "One from overseas, of the English nation, out of Britain." And again they said: "Spare him, and do not touch him."… Then at that same time St. Wilfrid the confessor, his father the Bishop having been honourably buried, … boarding a ship … came prosperously to his own region. Thus Eddius, not long after St. Wilfrid's death, as is conjectured from the age of Acca the bishop, to whom he inscribed the Life. For he was always most closely joined in friendship to St. Wilfrid, succeeded him immediately in the see of Hexham, and departed this life about the year 740.

[19] The venerable Bede too was an intimate of Acca, and by the venerable Bede and discoursed of him, then bishop, with much praise in chap. 21 of book 5; indeed he passed to heaven about five years before him: but which of the two first committed St. Wilfrid's deeds to writing, he himself or Eddius, is unknown to me. But it matters little. Both were certainly contemporaries. Let us hear, then, Bede also, in the said book 5, chap. 20. Having related the departure of SS. Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop from Britain, he goes on in these words: When they had come to Lyons, Wilfrid was detained there by Dalphinus, the bishop of the city: Benedict actively completed the journey he had begun, as far as Rome. For the Prelate was delighted by the young man's prudence of speech, the grace of his comely countenance, his eagerness in action and the constancy and maturity of his thought. Whence also he bestowed abundantly on him and his companions (as long as they were with him) all the things they had need of. And besides he offered that, if he wished, he would commit to him no small part of the Gauls to govern, and would give him his brother's virgin daughter as wife, and would himself hold him in the place of an adopted son. But he, giving thanks for the kindness which he deigned to have toward him (a stranger though he was), answered that he had rather the purpose of another manner of life, and therefore, having left his native land, had begun to journey to Rome. On hearing this, the Prelate sent him to Rome, giving him a guide for the journey, and liberally supplying at the same time all that the necessity of the journey demanded, earnestly beseeching him that, when he returned to his own country, he would remember to make his way by him…

[20] And when he (Wilfrid at Rome) had spent some months there occupied in happy studies, is attributed to queen Bathildis, are recited. he returned to Dalfinus in Gaul, and, having stayed three years with him, was tonsured by him, and was held in so great love that he thought to make him his heir. But that this might not come to pass, the Prelate was snatched away by a cruel death, and Wilfrid was rather reserved for the episcopate of his own nation, that is, of the English. For queen Balthild, sending soldiers, ordered the Bishop to be killed; whom indeed to the place where he was to be beheaded Wilfrid, his clerk, followed, desiring to fall together with him (though he himself much forbade it). But when the executioners learned that he was a stranger and sprung of the English nation, they spared him, and would not slaughter him with his Pontiff. But he, coming to Britain, and so on. Three biographers of St. Wilfrid besides Bede and Eddius I assigned at num. 15: Fridegodus, a poet of the tenth century; William of Malmesbury, a twelfth-century historian of English affairs; and an anonymous writer of I know not what age; yet I alleged them only in order to confirm from them that in the older and more correct codices of Bede, where St. Dalfinus's martyrdom is treated, the name of Bathildis was written, by no means that of Brunechild. For the other things which they have about our Prelate's dealings with Wilfrid and about his martyrdom it would be superfluous to transfer hither, since they are taken partly from Bede, partly from Eddius. I observe that the same is also the case in the Life of St. Wilfrid put together in the twelfth century by Eadmer, and published by our Elders in vol. III of April, p. 293; wherefore I pass to the French writers.

[21] Some things also from the Acts written in Gaul Above, at num. 4, I brought forward Sévert's words, in which he himself confesses that our holy Prelate is marked with a double name in the old Breviary of the archiepiscopal chamber of Lyons; and on that occasion I observed that the same is done in our manuscripts of his Life; namely in the prologue in this manner: Therefore I shall set forth the Life of Dalphinus, or of blessed Annemundus. Whence it was permissible to note in advance that, even though in the ancient catalogues of the bishops he is always, and in other ancient documents to be mentioned hereafter he is everywhere, called Annemundus, he was to some at least of the early French known by the name of Dalfinus. We have five manuscript copies of the Life, all of which indeed we judge to have proceeded from one and the same author, but some of which appear interpolated and arranged in a different order, while most are foully corrupted here and there. One we prefer to the rest, which was transcribed by the own hand of Father Pierre-François Chifflet, and transmitted to our Elders with the following observation: We have seen two forms of the Life of St. Annemundus: each by an anonymous author. The former was read, beyond all memory, through the more ancient churches of the city and diocese of Lyons: the first words of its preface are "Long since the virtues of the Martyrs." And this asserts that St. Annemundus was buried in the basilica of St. Peter of the nuns, in which also miracles are related to have been divinely wrought in early times at the tomb of the holy Martyr. The other, interpolated by the zeal of the Nicetians (that is, of those who contended that the Saint was buried in the church of St. Nicetius), is very like the former at the beginning, and indeed through almost its whole course, excepting only those passages in which St. Annemundus's body is claimed for the church of the nuns of St. Peter. This latter form we have neglected: the former we here give from several manuscript codices, namely those of St. Peter of the nuns of Lyons, of La Tour-du-Pin, of St. Martin of Ainay, of St. Martin of Île-Barbe, of St. Chef, of St. Rambert in the Jura, and of certain other churches. All which copies, since they are of the same sense, and differ from one another in a few strokes (as the copyists' liberty in transcribing is great), we have, from a collation of them with one another, forged into this one, and one most agreeable, as we think, to the mind of the primary author and to historical truth.

[22] drawn up, are exhibited The biographer supplies no word from which I might arrive, even by conjecture, at his age; nor have I so far seen anyone who has established anything certain about it, except the author of the Office printed at Paris in the year 1692, and to be mentioned more fully below, who at p. 89 says that that Life was written about the ninth century — whence he got this I do not know; that it is ancient, however, may be gathered from this, that, as Chifflet indicates, in the year 1308 the nuns of St. Peter of Lyons used its authority to prove St. Annemundus's burial in their basilica and their possession of his body. These things being premised, I contract into a compendium, out of the same Life (to be printed at the end of the Commentary), what is related about the Saint's martyrdom and other matters to be examined in the course of the work. He was the son of a most illustrious man, Sigo, brought up at the court of kings Dagobert I and Clovis II, and afterwards established bishop of the church of Lyons. Now he had such favour with the kings that whatever he asked he obtained. But when Clothaire III, the son of Clovis — who had been Annemundus's godson from the sacred bath of the font — obtained the kingdom, he was of such authority that nothing was granted to anyone save at Annemundus's suggestion: hence he fell into the hatred of all, who secretly accused him, as though he were plotting in secret to overthrow the kingdom of that same Clothaire…

[23] Meanwhile an assembly of the magnates was proclaimed by the king's command near Orléans, pertaining to his martyrdom: to which, when Annemundus had not come, being hindered by an indisposition, his enemies revealed the guile they had conceived against the blessed Pontiff, and his own Brother, who held the prefecture of Lyons … eminently, the king or queen Baldechild beheaded on a false charge of infidelity. There were also sent to Lyons three commanders, who were to present blessed Annemundus to the prince under faithful custody, or, if he refused, to leave him slain on the spot. The Prelate followed them with two priests, and as many deacons and clerks. To these there joined himself St. Waldebert, abbot of Luxeuil, whom Annemundus, on hearing of his brother's murder, had ordered to be summoned to him; but, as he feared that the Saint would be killed on the journey, the said commanders dismissed him, promising that no evil would befall him until he had been brought to the prince. They came to the territory of Chalon, where the rest halted, and St. Annemundus, wearied from the journey, took to a couch and gave himself to sleep. At that time it came about that in the mid-silence of the night he was secretly slain with the sword by two men suborned. At first light the crime was detected by the clerks and at once announced to the chief men of the army, who, coming at daybreak, found the body lifeless, and, mindful of the promise which they had lately made to father Waldebert, returned in sadness.

[24] From this account it is clear that the French felt far otherwise about the author of the holy Prelate's murder these things being duly set forth than the English. For let us grant for the moment that that Life — than which the French produce no older instrument concerning the martyrdom — was written by a contemporary of the Saint and an eyewitness of the martyrdom: from its words, even taken most strictly, it will be possible to deduce only this, that so great a number of false accusers, and without doubt the chief men of the court, so circumvented with guiles and abominable calumnies the king, still a minor, or his mother Bathildis, that she thought Annemundus's brother lawfully accused and plainly convicted of the crime, and consented to his death as just and necessary for the security of the kingdom. But since Annemundus was charged with the same crime, it is no wonder, granting the truth of the account, that he too was ordered to be brought to court, to plead his cause. Nor is it any more to be wondered at that his enemies took care to have him killed secretly on the journey. For they knew how much he had until then been in the affections of the king his godson, and in how great veneration with the queen for the holiness of his life: and they had good reason to fear that, if access to them were permitted him, he would easily make plain his own and his brother's innocence and the devices and calumnies of the envious.

[25] we conclude that he was indeed killed, in the reign of The matter being thus understood, as in my judgment it ought to be, I do not see what so great sin St. Bathildis committed against Annemundus. But since even so some suspicion at least is left concerning her excessive credulity in admitting the false accusations against the Saint's brother, and her easiness in permitting his punishment, Sévert says that the old Lyons Breviary, from which he recites a fragment of the Life, is corrupt in that place; and to prove this he has recourse to the Matins Lessons of the nuns of St. Peter of Lyons, where the following stand: The hatred of the malevolent conceived against the blessed Pontiff appeared openly. For they caused his brother, calumniated for the prefecture of Lyons in Gaul ill administered, to be beheaded. But Le Cointe, at the year 654, num. 15 and following, laughing at those who with Sévert distinguish Dalfinus and Annemundus as two bishops, contends that both the old Breviary and the venerable Bede's History are corrupt, and that from the former the names of Clothaire III

and of Baldechild must be erased; and that from the latter — whether the copies have Brunechild or Bathildis — the queen's name must be scraped out, and the name of king Clovis substituted, by whose soldiers he then thought our Prelate had been killed. Le Cointe changed his mind on this latter point at the year 751, num. 136, acknowledging that the Saint's martyrdom must be fixed after the year 658; but he also subjoined these words: Beware, however, of thinking queen Baldechild guilty of the murder inflicted. But he does not suggest a way of excusing her.

[26] under Bathildis, but by the envious But however Le Cointe may then have felt, the way assigned in the first place does not please: too violent is that necessity of expunging names, when so many copies of the anonymous biographer, of the venerable Bede, of Eddius, of Fridegodus and of Malmesbury cry out against it. For who would believe that all the copyists in so many different Works conspired to add a queen's name not found in the autographs? What Sévert adds about the Matins lessons — a copy of which, printed at Lyons in the year 1631, I have before my eyes — is a slight argument, or none. Their author did indeed everywhere follow the Life which we shall give, but he altered some things here and there, passed over some, and among these the name of the king and queen, and ascribed the death of Annemundus's brother to envious calumniators, to whom it ought truly to have been ascribed, adhering to the biographer's words. Bolland and other learned men everywhere, who maintain that the name of Bathildis was in fact expressed by Bede and the other authors alleged, enter upon an altogether better and plainer way to wipe every stain of crime from the most holy queen's memory.

[27] [against her will or without her knowledge, and that the English were deceived by common report,] They attribute the whole crime to Ebroin, the Mayor of the palace, a most crafty man, who, governing all things at his own discretion, took care that those Brothers should be removed out of the way, the queen being unaware or at least unwilling and, so far as she could, resisting. Since, however, he everywhere used the name and authority of the king and queen — in order, of course, to excuse his own cruelty under the cover of another's name — it was commonly believed that the whole affair was carried through with their assent and by their command. Thus we easily conceive why St. Wilfrid, then about twenty-five years old, or his Companions, through whom the holy Prelate's martyrdom became known to English writers, believed that the mandate which the leaders of the assassins professed to bear in taking the Saint away from Lyons had truly proceeded from the king and queen, and that perhaps in accordance with that same mandate his death was hastened on the journey, lest a tumult should be stirred up among the people. Hence also it came about that those same English imputed that murder to Bathildis — whom they knew as regent of the kingdom while Clothaire was still a minor, but whose sanctity they did not know — as to its chief author; indeed, that Eddius transferred to her, as to a most savage and impious woman, many crimes of this kind which he had heard of, partly truly committed in the Gauls but by others, partly at least fabricated as to their number. But from this too we learn how little trust is to be placed in popular rumours, and how dangerous it is to transmit them in writing to posterity, when we behold contemporary writers, and not otherwise bad ones, so shamefully deceived.

[28] It is not the place here to prove at greater length the excellent queen's sanctity, that her innocence may shine forth the more. who did not know the queen's sanctity. Let the curious reader go to her Acts, illustrated by Bolland at the day XXVI January, where first among her other virtues he will marvel at her piety and veneration toward ecclesiastical men, and will be taught how far she was from such ferocity. One example, however, it is necessary to bring hither, for the sake of a question presently to be discussed. The contemporary biographer relates that Bathildis, when she had already administered the kingdom for some time, wished to retire to the monastery of Chelles, built by her in the district of Paris. But the Franks, he says, for love of her put this off as long as possible, and did not permit it to be done; had it not been for that commotion through the wretched bishop Sigoberrand, whose pride among the Franks earned the ruin of death. And when strife arose from this, while they killed him against her will, fearing lest she should take this grievously against them, and should wish to avenge that cause, they permitted her to go suddenly to that monastery: in all likelihood before the report of the murder could be brought to her; to such a degree indeed did they look up to and dread her love of justice. Théophile Raynaud used the same argument in the Indiculus, and, as though about to add greater weight to it, said that Sigoberrand was in other respects an impious man and a bishop unworthy of that rank. Whether this will rightly be judged, from what is to be said in the following §.

§ III. The question whether the Saint is the same as Sigoberrand, also killed under St. Bathildis; the negative opinion is to us the more probable.

[ ] Sigoberrand the bishop, There are not wanting those who have suspected, and indeed tried to prove, that Sigoberrand — whose bishopric the biographer of St. Bathildis just cited does not designate — is the same as Annemundus, the prelate of Lyons. The first of all whom I know to have handled this argument is Bolland in the Preliminary Commentary to the Acts of St. Bathildis; but before he brought out the grounds of his suspicion, he checked Raynaud's censure, by no means favourable to the reputation of that same Sigoberrand, as follows: That Raynaud calls Sigebrand IMPIOUS we do not support. No one ought to be pronounced worse than he is proved to be. The author of the Life of St. Bathildis charges him with the crime of pride alone: "Had it not been for that commotion, through the wretched bishop Sigoberrand, whose pride among the Franks earned the ruin of death." That he calls him only WRETCHED, writing however, as is likely, while Ebroin was still alive, and that he says pride alone furnished the cause of his death, sufficiently indicates that he was not infamous for other crimes, and that Ebroin was the author of his death, and that the same man urged the retirement upon Bathildis, that she might not take vengeance: so that we plainly suspect that that Sigebrand was even innocent — which Binet also (in the Life of St. Bathildis published in French in the year 1624) hints at in chap. VI, writing that the prelate Sigebrand was hateful to the Franks on account of pride; and whether that charge was true or feigned, that he was at any rate exposed to public odium. What if that Sigebrand was Anemundus? and so on.

[30] For this place I have kept one answer out of the several set forth at num. 9 and following, which Raynaud, or another defender of his, opposed to the Bollandist critique in the Apopompæus, p. 32. It runs thus: That heap of blunders so studiously piled up will further decrease, whose reputation is rashly torn, if there be rejected the fact that Bolland, out of his own mere suspicion (and one injurious to a most holy Man), transforms Sigebrand, a wretched branded slave who deserved death for his pride,… into St. Ennemundus — upon whom far be it from us to admit that the foul marks of that Sigebrand fall. I am glad indeed that he at least tacitly acknowledges that Raynaud was rightly reprehended for having branded Sigoberrand with the mark of impiety; since to that part of the Bollandist critique he replies nothing, and here too abstains from the word impiety. But I could have wished he had likewise abstained from the word stigmatias, which among good Latin writers everywhere means an infamous man, or a slave who was branded with a hot iron that he might be recognized, especially if he had been in the habit of running away: which ought not rashly to have been applied to a bishop accused of pride alone, and in all likelihood falsely, as the reasons brought forward by Bolland persuade. Which reasons, if they could not move that author to believe Sigoberrand innocent, ought nevertheless to have restrained him from speaking of him more injuriously than St. Bathildis's own biographer.

[31] in all likelihood he was innocent, Others perceived the force of Bolland's reasons better. For, to pass over Chifflet in his Dissertation on the Years of Dagobert, and Father de Colonia in his History of the city of Lyons, who asserted absolutely what Bolland had only suspected, namely that Annemundus and Sigoberrand are one and the same, Valois in book 21 of the Rerum Francicarum, without any mention of a crime, places Sigoberrand in the same rank as Annemundus: I hold it for most certain, he says, that Annemundus, like Sigebrand and any others besides who were slain as bishops in the Gauls during the principate of Chlothaire, were slain by the treacheries, wicked machinations and instigation of Ebroin, prefect of the palace, and of other nobles like him — and if not without Bathildis's knowledge, at least against her will and, so far as she could, with her resistance; perhaps even after her retirement into the monastery. Le Cointe, at the year 664, num. 7, carping at Raynaud's censure against Sigoberrand in Bolland's own words, subjoins: What if we say that he was innocent and exposed by his enemies to public odium?

[32] killed against the will of St. Bathildis. Let us therefore lay it down, we too, that Sigoberrand was innocent — in such a way indeed that his rather severe justice, his constancy and fortitude of mind, by which he turned away from the company of the wicked then dwelling at court, by which he suffered himself to be induced neither by flatteries, prayers nor gifts either to determine anything himself against divine or human laws or to look on in silence at what was determined or perpetrated by others, and by which finally he pursued all vices — were painted in such black colours by his rivals that it was commonly believed to be pride. Hence that among the Franks — those, that is, whose crimes the man's virtue thwarted — he was said to have earned death; hence that he was called wretched by the first biographer of St. Bathildis, and by the second wretched, killed against the queen's will, undiscussed and against the law. So, I say, let us lay it down, and let us set forth the reasons of those who thought that Sigoberrand — or, as others write, Sigobrand — is the same as Annemundus.

[33] Bolland suspects him to be the same as Annemundus: Bolland, as though in passing, and with this intention, that if Sigoberrand could be proved the same as Annemundus, it would thence be the more plain that Annemundus was killed against Bathildis's will, thus begins: What if that Sigebrand was Anemundus? He indeed was the son of Sigo, to which the name Sigebrand seems to allude. And perhaps, while he was engaged in secular studies, he was called Sigebrand, afterwards Anemundus. What of the fact that he is said to have been puffed up with pride "among the Franks"? as though he himself were not a Frank: and Anemundus was a Roman. But of this more fully on XXVIII September. Whether this is to transform Sigoberrand, a wretched branded slave, into St. Annemundus to the latter's injury, as Raynaud's defender argues; or, having wiped the mark from Sigoberrand, to leave the matter to be further examined in its own place, let the fair reader judge. For my part I gladly bid farewell to the patron of a wretched cause, whose ineptitudes soon strike the eye, and turn to others.

[34] Mabillon, in the second Sæculum of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, p. 777, others assert it absolutely: having indicated Bolland's conjecture in a few words, says: This indeed does not depart much from the truth. Then, having made a computation of the years, he subjoins: From these things it is understood that Sigoberrand's slaying occurred at the same time as that of Annemundus bishop of Lyons: who accordingly seems not without reason to have been the same as Sigoberrand. This opinion, however, Mabillon afterwards abandoned, as we shall presently see. Chifflet and de Colonia, cited above, built up absolutely what Bolland had only suspected and left undecided; and the former indeed, in chap. 10 of the Dissertation on the years of Dagobert I, undertook of set purpose to prove it. But since his arguments consist chiefly in the elucidation of Bolland's conjecture and the addition of others like it, they have no force unless the arguments of the adversaries can be destroyed, which are drawn from records and from the testimonies of ancient writers. These, therefore, must be set forth first.

[35] Henschen in his Diatribe On the three Dagoberts

book 4; others deny it, and place Sigoberrand among the bishops of Paris, Mabillon in the Dissertation on the year of the death of Dagobert I and Clovis the Younger; Pagi in the Critica at the year 665; and Gérard Dubois in the History of the church of Paris, will have it that Sigoberrand was bishop of Paris — that man, namely, who is placed midway between Robert or Chrodobert and Importunus in the catalogues of the prelates of Paris, and who in Chenu and Du Breul is called Sigrobandus, in Claude Robert and the brothers Sainte-Marthe Sigobaudus, but in Mabillon's De Re diplomatica, p. 625, Sigobrandus. On the contrary Valois, who nevertheless distinguishes Annemundus from Sigoberrand, pronounces that the latter is falsely called by some a bishop of the Parisians, but does not state his reason. Chifflet, moreover, in chap. 12 of the Dissertation, thinks that Sigobrand was in a more recent age foisted into the series of the bishops of Paris out of a badly explained Life of St. Bathildis. However that may be, the chronological series of the bishops of the said city about those times is exceedingly difficult.

[36] For Chrodobert in Mabillon, vol. 1 of the Annals, p. 470, is read as subscribed to the Privilege whose series there is greatly entangled. which Bertefrid, bishop of Amiens, granted to the monastery of Corbie, under the day of the eighth of the Ides of September, in the seventh year of the reign of king Chlothaire; which year, according to the chronological arrangement most received to this day, falls in the year 663 of Christ; of Sigobrand as bishop of Paris there is no mention elsewhere; but Importunus is found in the said Mabillon, p. 482, subscribed to the Privilege of St. Mary of Soissons, given in the tenth year of Chlothaire the most glorious king, that is, 666 of Christ; yet Agilbert, according to the said catalogues the successor of Importunus, having been made bishop of the city of Paris, as Bede has it in book 3, chap. 28, consecrated St. Wilfrid — about thirty years old, on the testimony of the same writer in book 5, chap. 20 — bishop at Compiègne in the six hundred and sixty-fourth year, according to the same Bede in the chronological Recapitulation of the whole History. How entangled these things are, everyone sees; they may be discussed more laboriously, if it seem good, at the day XI October, on which Agilbert has been inserted into the Gallican Martyrology, or at the following day, on which Gérard Dubois says he is venerated.

[37] The death of St. Annemundus, according to Bede's reckonings A stronger argument, in my judgment, for distinguishing Annemundus and Sigoberrand is drawn from the year of St. Annemundus's death and the year of St. Bathildis's retirement into the monastery of Chelles. His death is thus deduced from the reckonings of the venerable Bede, book 5, chap. 20, concerning the deeds of St. Wilfrid, whom we have said was born in the year 634: When he reached the fourteenth year of his age (648 of Christ), he preferred the monastic life to the secular… He came therefore to the island of Lindisfarne, and there, giving himself over to the service of the monks, he diligently took care both to learn and to do those things which belonged to monastic chastity… And when he had served God in that monastery for some years, … he purposed in his mind to come to Rome… coming to queen Eanfled, … he made known to her his desire… She… sent him to Kent to king Earconbert, … asking that he would send him honourably over to Rome. At which time Honorius, one of the disciples of blessed Pope Gregory, a man loftily trained in ecclesiastical matters, held there the rank of the archbishopric. And when the youth of lively spirit had tarried there some while, diligently giving attention to those things which he was beginning, there came thither another youth by name Biscop, surnamed Benedict, … himself also desiring to come to Rome… To his company, therefore, the king joined Wilfrid, and ordered him to conduct him with himself to Rome.

[38] on the Deeds of St. Wilfrid It is to be noted that Honorius, in whose archbishopric Wilfrid came into Kent, on the testimony of the same Bede, book 3, chap. 20, departed from this light in the six hundred and fifty-third year from the Incarnation of the Lord, on the day before the Kalends of October. Whence Mabillon in his Dissertation on the year of the death of Dagobert I infers: Therefore not after this year did Wilfrid commit himself to the Roman journey. Pagi, however, at the year 658, num. IX, defers Wilfrid's undertaking of the pilgrimage to the month of May of the year 654, because Bede says that he tarried some while in Kent, and so on, which I recited in the preceding number. But Bede indicates by no word that Wilfrid tarried there after Honorius's death; rather he seems to praise the latter in that place only that we may understand that Wilfrid, at the time when he stayed in Kent, had Honorius as his teacher, a man loftily trained in ecclesiastical matters. Nor yet do I think Wilfrid's pilgrimage is to be placed long before his death. For if by the some years during which he stayed in the monastery of Lindisfarne we understand about four, and assign one to his stay in Kent, and add them to the year 648, in which he passed over to the monks, we shall fall on 653, which was the nineteenth year of his age.

[39] occurred some years And so, setting sail from England about the year 653, Wilfrid came to Lyons, and was there detained for some while by our holy Prelate, and at length went on to Rome. And when he had spent some months there occupied in happy studies, he returned to Dalfinus in Gaul, and, having stayed three years with him, was tonsured by him, and was held in so great love that he thought to make him his heir; but that this might not come to pass, the Prelate was snatched away by a cruel death. Thus Bede. Eddius has: For three years he remained together with him (Dalfinus), and then subjoins the things that were done in that three-year period down to the Bishop's martyrdom. According to these reckonings Mabillon in the dissertation cited, Castellanus in the Universal Martyrology, and the author of the Paris Martyrology, mark the slaying of Annemundus in the year 657; Pagi attaches it to the following year, on account of the Privilege of Emmo, bishop of Sens, for the monastery of St. Peter at Sens, which Mabillon himself published in part 2, vol. 3 of the Benedictine Sæculum, p. 613. For the year of its granting is thus marked: Enacted at the royal manor of Mansolacum, in the third year of the reign of our lord king Chlothaire; and after Emmo and John, bishop of Arles, there is read subscribed Unemundus, bishop, as is noted in the margin, of Lyons — which to me also appears most likely. But since king Chlothaire succeeded his father Chlodovæus only in the year 656, I gladly subscribe to Pagi's opinion so far as he will have it that St. Annemundus's martyrdom is not to be fixed before 658. But since, by his own admission, the third year of Chlothaire could only begin after the second week of November of the said year 658, I do not equally agree with him when he claims that the martyrdom must be knit to this same year. For Bede's narrative about Wilfrid's Roman journey, which Pagi opposes, does not so bind us that it cannot be deferred to the following year. Certainly in Wilfrid's first stay with our Prelate, in the journey and the stay in the city of Rome and in the return to Lyons, taken together, two years and a little more could easily be consumed: indeed one, which alone is found in Mabillon's and Pagi's computation, seems scarcely to suffice for them.

[40] As regards St. Bathildis's retirement into the monastery of Chelles, before St. Bathildis's retirement, Mabillon binds it to the year 664, Le Cointe and Pagi to the following, others even later; which of them more rightly, I do not discuss: for the present purpose it suffices that Chifflet himself, in the Dissertation on the Years of Dagobert I, p. 406, confesses that the administration of the kingdom was carried on by queen Bathildis down to the XXVIII day of September of the year 663, and repeats the same at p. 414. For hence it becomes manifest that Sigoberrand, after whose murder the queen suddenly laid down the administration and retired to Chelles, was a different man from Annemundus, unless it can be solidly proved that the latter's martyrdom is to be placed five or six years later than Mabillon, Pagi and others made out from the reckonings of Bede and Eddius. Chifflet indeed attempted this in the said Dissertation, p. 407, where, agreeing with us about the age and deeds of St. Wilfrid down to his undertaking of the Roman journey, he proceeds in this manner. He came to Lyons in the year 653; having stayed there nearly two years, he set out for Rome in 655; in the going and the returning, and in the things which Bede and Eddius say he did at Rome, he could have spent not less than two years. So he will have returned to the Bishop at Lyons in 657. To these add, he says, SIX YEARS passed in Dalfinus's household, and you will arrive at the XXIX year of his age, DCLXIII of Christ, in which he mourned Dalfinus his adoptive parent wickedly slain on the XXVIII day of the month of September. In the following year DCLXIV he was first consecrated priest, and soon, the Quartodeciman Scots having been routed, he was ordained bishop, when he was about thirty years old. Thus Chifflet, who at p. 405 had advised (and in this indeed the greater force of the argument had to consist) that in the Trier codex of Bede it is read better than in the common editions, that Wilfrid on his return from Rome stayed six years with Dalfinus.

[41] But that it is so read better did not persuade the writers cited above; so that against Chifflet nor further will it persuade me that the single Trier copy is correct, and that all the rest — not only of Bede, both published and unpublished, of which Pagi testifies that he saw six in the Colbert library, but also the copies of Eddius Stephanus and of Eadmer — are faulty, all of which assign only three years to the stay at Lyons. Besides, while Chifflet grants so ample a space of time to Wilfrid on his travels, he does not notice within how narrow limits he circumscribes his remaining deeds down to the episcopate. For Wilfrid, his father the bishop (Annemundus) having been honourably buried, crossed over into England; and when he had arrived there, Alfrid, son of Oswy king of the Northumbrians, called him, kept him with him, had him as a master of Christian learning, as Bede writes, loved him as Jonathan loved David, as Eddius testifies, gave him land of ten families, and not long after a monastery of thirty families, over which he should preside as abbot. Meanwhile there came thither Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, and stayed among them for some while; who also, at Alchfrid's request, made Wilfrid priest in his aforesaid monastery. Bede, book 3, chap. 25. The question about the celebration of Easter was stirred; a conference was proclaimed at the monastery of Whitby; on the one side St. Colman was present with his men, on the other Agilbert with Wilfrid. The latter, being asked by the king to declare his opinion, said: Let my disciple Wilfrid the priest speak, I beseech, in my stead, because we both, with the rest, are of one mind. The conference ended, Agilbert returned into Gaul his native land; Colman into Scotland, leaving the see of York. This Tuda, bishop of Lindisfarne, governed for a short time.

[42] by various arguments Wilfrid was sent by Alfrid into Gaul to be ordained bishop, when he was about thirty years old, the same Agilbert then holding the bishopric of the city of Paris; in the year, as Chifflet himself lays down, 664 — who accordingly must admit that all that has been related occurred within the space of one year and the few months which flowed from the XXVIII day of September of the year 663 down to the beginning of the following one; which to me is not credible, and even from this head it becomes manifest that Bede assigned only three years to Wilfrid's stay at Lyons with Annemundus. Wherefore

I judge that Wilfrid was already then living with Alfrid, when Agilbert relinquished the bishopric of the West Saxons, of which the Saxon Chronicler writes at the year 660: This Agilbert departed from Cenwalh (king of the West Saxons) and Wine, receiving his bishopric, held it for three years. Then most likely Agilbert turned aside into Northumbria, and stayed there with Alfrid and Wilfrid, until, the conference at Whitby being ended about the beginning of the year 664, he returned into Gaul. Thus it is better perceived why Agilbert called Wilfrid his disciple, with whom, on Chifflet's view, he could have dealt for only a few months.

[43] is shown: whence it is concluded I return to St. Bathildis's retirement, which Chifflet joins with the death of St. Annemundus, namely in the year 663 in the month of September. Here the said author has against him two privileges of the monastery of Corbie, inserted in vol. 1 of the Councils of Gaul, p. 501 and following. The first is of king Chlothaire, and is closed with this formula: And that this precept may be held the firmer and preserved through the ages, we and our most exalted mother the lady Baldechild, queen most great, decree that it be confirmed below with our seals. Vidrehad ordered it. The sign of the glorious lord king Chlothaire. The sign of the most exalted queen Baldechild. Given on the XXIII day of the month of December, in the V year of our reign. The other was granted by Bertefrid, bishop of Amiens, because, as he says, the most glorious lord king Chlothaire, and also the most exalted lady queen Balthildis, … laid open a religious petition to our ears, and so on. At the end it is signed: This privilege was made on the eighth day of the Ides of September, in the VII year of the reign of king Clothaire. These things, I say, Chifflet has against him. For since in his view Clovis died at the close of the year 660, or the beginning of 661, the first privilege on that same view will have been given in the month of December in the year 664 or 665, the fifth of his son; the second in the year 667: both after Bathildis had laid down the administration of the kingdom. The learned man saw the knot, and therefore in chap. 12 of the Dissertation he said that Bathildis could have subscribed, or at least be mentioned in the said privileges, when she had already been received into the monastery of Chelles. But the solution does not satisfy, certainly not for the first privilege, to which Bathildis subscribes all too manifestly as queen and as administering the kingdom with her son. For why should Chlothaire be said to wish the privilege to be confirmed with his mother's seal as with his own; or what firmness would her seal have brought, if the king were then grown up and reigning alone, and the mother were living in a monastery?

[44] The way is plainer in the opinion, most received to this day, of those who set the death of Clovis II in the year 656: that Sigoberrand was a different man from Annemundus. for on that view the first privilege belongs to the year 660, in which the fifth year of Chlothaire had in all likelihood already begun in the month of December, and the second to 663, up to November of which the seventh year of the same king was running, and in which year, on the eighth day before the Ides, or the sixth day of the month of September, Bathildis had not yet retired, as all admit. But from this same second privilege there also flows an argument which no one, so far as I know, has hitherto used against those who confound Annemundus with Sigoberrand. For the first who granted it is read subscribed as Bertefrid of Amiens, the second as Genesius the bishop — of Lyons, as all likewise admit, the next successor of St. Annemundus: whence it follows that neither can Annemundus's death be joined with Bathildis's retirement, nor can he be confounded with Sigoberrand, with whose murder all join the queen's retirement. Wherefore Bolland's first conjecture, by which Sigoberrand is absolved of the crime fastened upon him, I indeed praise and adopt as most likely; but the other, which, as he had promised, I have now abundantly discussed, I cannot embrace as probable.

[45] Chifflet, however, presses one last point, arguing thus: Let us freely grant this to our adversaries, Answer is given to Chifflet's that Sigobrand was a different man from Annemundus; that the latter was bishop of Lyons, the former of Paris: since both perished under Balthildis as guardian of the kingdom, and Sigobrand was the later of the two, as the one at whose murder the queen was indignant and gave up the helm — if Annemundus had already before been crushed by the hatreds of the Frankish courtiers, why did the contemporary author of Balthildis's Life say no word about so sacrilegious a crime perpetrated during her own reign? Why did she not punish by the law of retaliation the murderers of an Archprelate at once most holy and most innocent? Why did she not at least reduce them to order, or, if she could not, … why did she not from that time, weary of royal cares, hide herself away in a monastery? Assuredly she did this last thing, and this the author of her Life recorded; because both to Balthildis and to the writer of her Life Sigobrand and Annemundus were one and the same. To these things it will be answered that many things happened during Bathildis's reign which the biographer suppressed in silence; but that he mentioned specifically the slaying of Sigoberrand, because on that occasion the queen hastened to the monastery, and he judged that this must be indicated to the reader.

[46] That the queen did not previously punish the murderers of Annemundus, arguments. no one asserts. Yet let it be so; suppose she did not do it: perhaps she did not know them, for, on the testimony of our biographer, Annemundus on the way, in the mid-silence of the night, … was secretly slain, while in the morning the commanders grieved, whether truly or feignedly, who claimed that the charge of conducting him to court had been committed to them: or if she knew at least those by whose order the crime was perpetrated, perhaps they were such in number and in power that, as Chifflet himself suggests, she could not take vengeance. That she did not then give up the helm of the kingdom had for its cause, most likely, that at that time Chlothaire was a minor — and certainly he was such in the year 659 — and accordingly not to be left to the discretion of perverse men. He was not a minor when the slaying of Sigoberrand occurred and the queen suddenly retired. For in the Life of St. Bertila, abbess of Chelles, in Mabillon, part 1 of the third Benedictine Sæculum, p. 25, an almost contemporary author expressly says: And now, the lord Chlothaire her son being grown up, (Bathildis) with the consent of her nobles, left the care of the royal palace, and, to serve as a soldier of Christ the Lord in the monastery which she herself had built, submitted herself to the above-written lady Bertila the abbess in obedience. Thus conjectures are dissolved by conjectures, while the arguments alleged above for the distinction of the prelates retain their force.

§ IV. The Saint's birth; his family name; his episcopate; and certain deeds elucidated.

[ ] The Saint calls his brother Dalfinus, The names of St. Annemundus's parents are indicated by the author of the Life right at the beginning, at num. 2, saying: He was therefore the son of the most illustrious man Sigo the prefect, and of Petronia. Of his brother he treats at num. 3, asserting that he had been adorned with the prefecture of the city of Lyons when, falsely accused, he was beheaded. But in our transcript, which on Chifflet's word we shall print as the more correct, the name of the said brother is not expressed; in others he is called Dalfinus; and so far rightly, if indeed the instrument is to be admitted as authentic and not interpolated which Mabillon brings forward in vol. 1 of the Annals, p. 690, from the archive of St. Peter of Lyons under this title: The precept which St. Annemundus made for the monastery of St. Peter for maidens in the city of Lyons — which in its place we shall transfer hither entire. For in it the Saint calls himself Annemundus, his father Sigo, his mother Petronia, his two sisters Petronilla and Lucia, who had received the sacred veil in the same monastery, and finally his brother Dalfinus. That our Prelate too was called by this name by some — indeed by this alone by Bede, Eddius and other English writers everywhere — is established from what has been said before. Thus far, however, it has seemed good to defer the opinions of the French concerning that diversity of name.

[48] which more likely I begin with Sévert and Raynaud, who, although they maintained that Bede's Dalfinus is by no means to be confounded with Annemundus, nevertheless were unwilling to deny that the name or surname of Dalfinus had been attributed to the latter by some, on account of the testimony of our biographer, who says: Therefore I shall set forth the life of Dalfinus, or of blessed Annemundus, and again describe his passion. Wherefore, that they might dissolve the argument which was apt to be formed from that against their own opinion, Sévert says: One may suppose that the word Dalfinus, attributed to that same St. Annemundus, was the surname of his family, perhaps akin to the earlier Dalfinus (namely him whom he wrongly sets down as killed under Brunichild) — just as many are wont to be inscribed only with the name of their house, profession, status, nation, or exploits, their proper names being often omitted. Raynaud answers more briefly in the first edition of the Indiculus, saying that perhaps the name of Dalfinus was given to Annemundus because he suffered from a like cause as Dalfinus formerly did: you have the words in §1, num. 5; but in the second edition he adds that he was called Dalfinus because that was the surname of the family. On the contrary Valois, granting no place to any Dalfinus in the series of the prelates of Lyons, is of opinion that for the name of Annemundus the bishop there was put by Bede the name of his brother Dalfinus, prefect or count of Lyons: I judge, he says, that Bede sometimes committed to writing, without sufficiently sifting them, the things which were narrated by his countrymen returning from Italy or from Gaul, or were said to have befallen them, and that he substituted Dalfinus for Anemundus his brother, and the count of Lyons for the bishop. Further, if I sufficiently grasp his mind, he interpreted the text of our biographer just brought forward as though the particle seu there had the force also of a conjunctive, and so designated two persons; for Valois says that Sévert brings forward Acts containing the Life of Dalfinus AND of Bl. Anemundus the martyr.

[49] Chifflet conjectures that our Saint had three names after the manner of the Romans, was the family name, among whom, especially the more noble, it was customary to heap several names upon one head. He produces examples in Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus and Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, likewise two bishops of Gaul; and hence, he says, it ought not to seem strange that upon Annemundus (who in the Acts is called a Roman by nation), a man of illustrious family, there were bestowed also the surnames of Dalfinus and Sigobrandus — of which Dalfinus is the family name, and Sigobrandus a surname given to the lovely boy, the son of Sigo, either by his father himself or by his mother, and afterwards retained in use by others. Into the origin of the last name we do not inquire further, inasmuch as we deny that it was ever bestowed on our Saint. But what Chifflet with others holds about the two former names is most likely. And so we too are of opinion that Annemundus was the Saint's forename, and Dalfinus the surname of the family; and that the former was used both by himself in drawing up instruments and confirming them with his subscription, and by others everywhere, that he might be distinguished from his brother, who had been accustomed to be addressed by the family name alone: yet not so generally but that sometimes, and perhaps more frequently among his household, the Saint too went by that of Dalfinus, as the more honourable and more illustrious name.

[50] Hence one may conjecture why St. Wilfrid, who had stayed with him three years at Lyons, and was therefore attributed to the Saint himself by the English. named him Dalfinus rather than Annemundus, when, on his return to England, he discoursed among his intimates about his deeds and martyrdom. In this way it will not be necessary, with Valois, to charge with negligence the venerable Bede and Eddius Stephanus, who could not learn the Saint's Deeds more nearly than from

St. Wilfrid's own mouth. Thus too our biographer's words will not have to be twisted, with the rest of the context fighting against it. It is true, I confess, that among writers of the Middle Ages the particle seu often has the force of the copulative and; but that the speech here is of one person only is disclosed by the words presently subjoined: He was therefore the son of the most illustrious man Sigo the prefect, etc.; it is disclosed by the whole series of the narrative, which constantly regards one Annemundus, and in which the slaying of his brother is mentioned merely incidentally, as they say, and very briefly. Further, I have now once and again hinted that St. Annemundus is in his Acts said to be a Roman by nation: but about the sense of that word too French writers labour.

[51] Pierre Bullioud in an Observation on num. 2 of the Life of St. Triverius advises that the same must be laid down about our Saint as about St. Benedicta, virgin and martyr, who is called Roman, not because she came from Rome into the Gauls, … but because she sprang from Gallic forebears subject to the Roman emperors, It is asked why the Saint is called a Roman by nation. namely people of Lyons, enjoying Roman law … or at any rate people of Laon. Chifflet, with other more recent writers, says, when St. Annemundus is read to be a Roman by nation, this means not a Goth, not a Frank, not a Burgundian, or of other newcomers; but a native Gaul, who used Roman customs and laws. Raynaud in the Indiculus, after relating Pierre Bullioud's opinion, from which he does not seem much removed, subjoins: It can, however, be objected on the contrary that in the year of Christ near seven hundred, in which St. Ennemundus flourished, nothing was left of the Romans in Gaul, in which, after the Sicambri had begun to reign, the yoke of the Romans having been shaken off from the year CCCCXX, they made such progress in a short time that both the power and the name of the Romans had died out in Gaul long before the times of St. Ennemundus. Why then could not St. Ennemundus be called simply a Roman by nation and race — whether, his parents having come from Italy into Gaul, he was born there, or whether, being himself born at Rome, … he migrated into the Gauls with his family. Of St. Benedicta, who flourished in the reign of Diocletian, while the Romans still held Gaul, there could be another account. Add that what the said Bullioud builds up about St. Benedicta's native land is at the least doubtful, as are her Acts, which may be examined on the day VIII October, and which are very suspect. To me indeed, for claiming the Saint's native land for the French, the reason adduced by Chifflet and others is more plausible; but Raynaud's objection is no less likely — so far, that is, as the phrase a Roman by nation, taken in its proper and natural sense, signifies that the Saint drew his origin from truly Roman or Italian ancestors. For what stands in the way of my believing that he himself was born at Rome and migrated into the Gauls is that in those same Acts of his he is said to have been brought up at the court of king Dagobert.

[52] It is uncertain where and in what year he was born or advanced to the episcopate As the place, so also the year of his birth is unknown to us. That he was born not after the year 622, in which Dagobert I was proclaimed king of Austrasia, may be gathered from this, that in the year 652, or at any rate 653, he occupied the see of Lyons, as is established from the instruments presently to be mentioned. For in that year he must have counted the thirtieth of his age, unless there was an urgent cause why he should be promoted to the episcopate while younger. But that there was no such cause may again be gathered from this, that Viventiolus himself, or rather Viventius, on retiring from the episcopate, substituted him for himself and consecrated him Prelate. This not only the biographer writes, but the Saint himself testifies in his Precept for the monastery of St. Peter of Lyons, saying: I make known that at the request of my predecessor Viventiolus of blessed memory, archbishop of that church (of Lyons), who ordained me archbishop of the aforesaid church while he was still living, etc. But neither from these do we have anything certain, since, even if it were established that he was adorned with the episcopal infulæ as soon as he had attained a suitable age, even so we should not know how many years of his episcopate the year 652 was.

[53] he was bishop in the year 652, about which time from the sacred font The first instrument — about whose value and authority, however, the learned do not agree — is the privilege of Landeric, bishop of Paris, for the monastery of St. Denis, given in the month of July in the XV year of the reign of Clovis the most glorious king, that is, 652 of Christ; and to it, after Landeric, our Saint is read subscribed first in these words: I Munemundus, bishop, have consented and subscribed. The other is the diploma of that same king Cludovicus or Chlodovæus for the same monastery of St. Denis, given on the X day of the Kalends of July in the XVI year of his reign; and in it indeed, in Sirmond, among the subscriptions of the bishops as witnesses the first is exhibited thus: I Munemundus, bishop, consenting, have subscribed. But in Mabillon, who gave the same diploma printed from the autograph itself in book 6 of De Re diplomatica, chap. 7, it stands, also in the first place: I Annemundus, a sinner, consenting, have subscribed. To about the same times, that is, to the year 651 or 652, we refer what Sévert and other writers of the affairs of Lyons relate about the Saint, namely that he was so dear to king Clovis that the latter wished him to be godfather of Clothaire III, his firstborn son. Nor do they assert this without ground; for in two places the biographer clearly indicates the same: at num. 2, where, recording Clothaire's affection of love toward Annemundus, he adds: Who (Clothaire) had been his (Annemundus's) godson from the sacred bath of the font; and at num. 8, where he brings in the Saint, accused of a crime conceived against that same king, answering thus: There has not grown in me the madness of so great savagery that I should envy the glory of him from whose font I took my father's surname, and of whose Christian profession I stand as witness.

[54] But since St. Ouen in the Life of St. Eligius testifies the same of Eligius, he received king Clothaire: St. Ouen asserts the same of St. Eligius; saying: The queen (Bathildis) brought forth a son, and Eligius had him as his godson, and called him by the name Lothair, which he had long before bestowed — since, I say, Ouen testifies this of Eligius, there are those who deny what is asserted of Annemundus, and in particular Le Cointe at the year 651, num. 34, subjoining to the words already cited: Sévert is therefore to be corrected, who wrongly calls St. Annemundus, bishop of Lyons, the godfather of Clothaire in the elogium of that same Annemundus. Certainly Sévert is to be corrected, and the guide whom he followed; our biographer is to be abandoned, whose authority cannot be compared with the authority of St. Ouen — if indeed they write such things that their statements cannot be reconciled, and, the truth of the one standing, the falsity of the other necessarily follows. But this Le Cointe does not prove. On the contrary Chifflet, in the often-cited Dissertation on the Years of Dagobert, says that our biographer is very easily reconciled with St. Ouen, when the one calls Clothaire the godson of Annemundus and the other of Eligius: If he was baptized by the one, and received from the sacred font by the other; just as we read of the boy Symphorian in his Acts and in the Chronicle of St. Bénigne, that he was baptized by St. Benignus and received from the sacred font by St. Andochius. For from Baptism there arises a double kinship of spiritual paternity, the one in him who baptizes, the other in him who receives: which two kinships, observed in the Church beyond all memory, were retained even by the sacrosanct council of Trent (many others being abolished), Sess. XXIV, chap. 2. Whence it appears that he who is initiated by Baptism ought to be and to be called the godson not only of the godfather or receiver, but also of him by whom he was baptized.

[55] Here the Mass of St. Symphorian in Mabillon, book 3 On the Gallican Liturgy, p. 281, favours Chifflet after a fashion: but there is nothing repugnant in it. for in its immolatio or preface Andochius, who received him, and Benignus, who baptized him, are equally called the fathers of Symphorian, in these words: Who, following the blessed fathers Andochius and Benignus, etc. Let us grant, however, that both our biographer and St. Ouen used the word godson in its commoner signification, as regarding only the receiver from the sacred bath: not even so will the biographer have to be corrected, unless it be shown that in the seventh century it was the custom that only one receiver should be admitted at Baptism. We conjecture the contrary from the council of Metz of the year 888 in Labbe, vol. 9 of the Councils, col. 414, where the custom of admitting several is implied to have been in vigour, since it is expressly rescinded by the bishops of Belgica Prima in canon 6, as follows: By no means shall two or more, but one only, receive an infant from the font of Baptism. But that not even then was that custom abolished throughout the whole of Gaul is clear from the synod of Bayeux of the year 1300 in the same Labbe, vol. XI, col. [ ], in whose canon 4 it is decreed thus: For lifting a child from the sacred font let only three be received. It is clear from the Baptism of Philip Augustus, king of the French, narrated thus in the History of his father Louis VII in Duchesne, vol. 4, p. 419: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation MCLXV … a royal offspring having been born, on the day after his birth, that is, on the Lord's day… Maurice, bishop of Paris, … solemnly regenerated the royal offspring … by Baptism. Hugh also, abbot of St.-Germain of Paris, as godfather held the boy in his arms over the font of Baptism. Hervey also, abbot of St.-Victor, and Odo, formerly abbot of St.-Geneviève, stood as godfathers. Constance the sister of king Louis, wife of Raymond count of St.-Gilles, and two Parisian widows stood as godmothers.

[56] In the year 653 he receives St. Wilfrid according to Bede, whose account, To the year 653, perhaps as it was closing, we knit the first approach of St. Wilfrid, on pilgrimage to Rome, to our holy Prelate; when the latter, keeping him with him, offered him no small part of the Gauls to govern, and his brother's virgin daughter as wife, and himself desired to have him in the place of an adopted son; as we have been more fully taught from the venerable Bede's account given above: in this place, however, we repeat these things briefly, because Valois in Rerum Francicarum, book 21, p. 245, if he does not absolutely deny, at least pulls down as scarcely likely whatever the Saint is said to have offered Wilfrid. Let us give his words: Indeed, though I should grant that the bishop of so great a city, primate and patriarch of all Gallia Lugdunensis, wished to bestow his brother's daughter upon a poor youth, a foreigner, unknown and never before seen, and even resolved to make the same man, already tonsured and enrolled among the clergy, the sole heir of all his goods, his brother's children being excluded: yet I do not see what part of the Gauls the Prelate could have committed to the young man to govern; since at that time no bishops in the Gauls had provinces subject to them, or belonging to their church, over which they might themselves set governors; but all Gaul, excepting Gothia and Britanny too, was under the rule and dominion of the kings of the Franks, nor did the provinces have other patricians or other dukes, nor the cities and towns other counts, than those whom our kings, or the prefects of the palace in the kings' name, had appointed for a time. Thus Valois.

[57] by Valois I confess there are here some things which, had they been narrated by an author remote from the events, unknown, and suspected of fables, might seem strange and rightly cast doubt upon their truth. But since they have Bede as their author, a grave and holy man, who could have learned them from Wilfrid's own mouth, and since besides they have as witness Eddius Stephanus, Wilfrid's contemporary and intimate (for he writes the same things as the venerable Bede), they seem to me to deserve, if anything does, historical credit, and that of the firmest. Nevertheless it is worth while to consider the several points a little more attentively. First he seems to wonder, and as it were not believing and unwillingly to concede, that our Saint offered his brother's daughter to a poor youth, a foreigner, unknown. But what is more wonderful in this than in the case of queen Bathildis? She, as Valois himself narrates without any sign of doubt in book 20, p. 209, was captured by pirates in the island of Britain and sold for a low price to Erchinoald, then prince of the Franks governing the palace; and thus, poor, a foreigner and unknown, she so won her lord's favour that he, when his wife died, wished to marry her, and, when she had declined marriage with him, allowed her to be raised to the royal marriage-bed of Clovis II. Allowed her, I say — nay, in all likelihood himself raised her; since Erchinoald played the part not of a mayor of the royal house but of a king, not of a minister but of a lord, as the same Valois relates at p. 215.

[58] There is added that Valois, at his own mere discretion, made St. Wilfrid poor and unknown. not sufficiently proved. For, to pass over that he himself a little before, praising Bede, thus begins Wilfrid's deeds: Wilfrid, born among the Northumbrians of no mean parents; and that, on the testimony of Eadmer his biographer, Wilfrid the child of God, born in nobility of the renowned stock of the English nation, … strove by his own industry to add to that nobility the nobility of manners — these things, I say, to pass over, the manner in which Bede and Eddius write of Wilfrid as he was purposing to go to Rome by no means denotes poverty. For according to them the pious youth, desirous of pilgrimage, went to Eanfled queen of Northumbria, to whom he was known, and who sent him to Kent to king Erconbert, … asking that he would send him honourably over to Rome, as Bede writes; or as Eddius has it: Queen Eanfled sent him honourably, by messengers carefully commended, to her own kinsman Erconbert, king of the men of Kent, that he might be with him until he should find faithful companions of the journey going to the Apostolic See. Then Bede: There came thither another youth by name Biscop, surnamed Benedict, of the nobles of the English, himself also desiring to come to Rome… To his company, therefore, the king joined Wilfrid, and ordered him to conduct him with himself to Rome.

[59] For my part, when I read so solicitous a care for the youth on the part of a king and queen described in grave and contemporary writers, it is elucidated I cannot doubt that, in keeping with the majesty of those who sent him, he arrived at Lyons in such a state that he was neither poor nor unknown; nor, considering the excellent gifts of body and mind with which he was adorned, ought he to have seemed unworthy of one to whom the holy Bishop should offer his brother's daughter with all his inheritance. Nor would he thus have inflicted an injury on his brother's children, who in all likelihood were not — or at any rate are not proved to have been — others besides that one maiden. No more incredible does that appear to me at which Valois above all sticks, namely that the Saint wished to commit to Wilfrid, already destined for his brother's daughter, no small part of the Gauls to govern. For, granting even, as I do, all that Valois objects, Bede does not say that the Saint offered Wilfrid a part of the Gauls to govern as his own. Wherefore, just as by prudent conjecture it must be laid down that he determined nothing about the marriage of his brother's daughter before the king and the mayor of the palace, being consulted, had approved it on account of Wilfrid's manifest virtue and excellence, so also that he promised Wilfrid nothing about a government unless he were safe and certain of their consent and will. And here the testimony of our biographer fits admirably: Yet he was so acceptable to the kings and nobles that whatever he asked of them, he obtained.

[60] There remains one thing which displeased Valois, namely Bede's statement couched in these words: and is defended. He was tonsured by him (Wilfrid, after the marriage was refused) and was held in so great love that he thought to make him his heir; Valois adds of his own sole heir of all his goods, his brother's children being excluded. I have already said that it is not proved that the Bishop's brother had more children than the one maiden mentioned by Bede. And who knows whether she did not follow the example of the bridegroom destined for her by her parents, and prefer heavenly nuptials to worldly ones, and consecrate her virginity to God in the monastery with her two aunts, the sisters of her father and her uncle? Nevertheless, let it be that the brother's daughter remained in the world and married another; even in that case it is permissible to believe that the Saint transferred very many goods to her, just as it is established that he granted many things to the monastery of St. Peter of Lyons, where his two own sisters were living as nuns: so that toward the end of his life he thought to make Wilfrid heir only of that portion which he had retained for himself to pass the remainder of his life in keeping with his dignity. Besides, when I weigh Bede's context attentively, I strongly suspect that his words indicate that the Saint intended to substitute Wilfrid as his successor in the episcopate, and perhaps to leave him his furniture and other things pertaining to the episcopate. Certainly to these words, that he thought to make him his heir, Bede presently subjoins: But that this might not come to pass, the Prelate was snatched away by a cruel death, and Wilfrid was RATHER reserved for the EPISCOPATE of his own, that is, of the English nation: which plainly implies that in the earlier words mention is also made of the episcopate of Lyons.

§ V. The monastery of St. Peter of Lyons restored by the Saint and enriched with goods and privileges; the time, manner and kind of his martyrdom.

[ ] He did not first found the convent of St. Peter of Lyons There were not wanting formerly, as we learn from Paradin and Sévert, those who believed that the convent of the nuns of St. Peter of Lyons was first built and endowed by St. Annemundus. And indeed Leidrad, prelate of Lyons, seemed to hint at something of the kind in his Letter to Charlemagne, a fragment of which is exhibited in Sévert under Leidrad, and which afterwards was subjoined entire in vol. 4 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana. The words of the said prelate are these: The monastery of maidens also, dedicated in honour of St. Peter, where the body of St. Annemundus is buried, which that holy Bishop himself instituted, I have restored from the foundations, both the church and the house, where now nuns to the number of thirty-two, living according to the regular institution, are seen to dwell. But that St. Annemundus was only its restorer, older instruments afterwards brought to light now compel us to believe: and first of all that which we have several times mentioned, our Saint's precept for the same convent, in which he not only signifies at some length that it existed before his own times, but that the said convent was inhabited by virgins even in the third century.

[62] but restored it; For he mentions four virgins whom Albertus, a most noble man, caused to be consecrated there, who was one of the first converted, not long after the passion of St. Irenæus and his Companions. But because in this place that precept can with reason seem suspect of interpolation or corruption, Mabillon and the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana allege from the same archive of St. Peter of Lyons an old instrument of better note, given in the twenty-sixth year of king Guntchramnus, that is, at the close of the sixth century, in which express mention is made of the monastery of maidens of St. Peter of Lyons, and in which it is said to have been founded by king Gaudisellus and queen Theudelinda. That instrument may be seen at the end of vol. 4 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, and Mabillon's observations upon it in vol. 1 of the Benedictine Annals, p. 222. Nor is it the place here to inquire further into the first origin of the monastery, since it is sufficiently established that Leidrad's words are to be understood only of its restoration. We subjoin therefore, as we promised above, St. Annemundus's precept.

[63] I Annemundus, archbishop of the church of St. Stephen the protomartyr of Lyons, the instrument is given, the first see of the Gauls, make known to all the faithful, as much present as future, that at the request of my predecessor Viventiolus of blessed memory, archbishop of that church, who ordained me archbishop of the aforesaid church while he was still living, and who bestowed many benefits on the monastery of St. Peter where nuns dwell as maidens — above all these things I have considered that it would be best to give my labour to that same monastery, on account of my two sisters, who there, by the assiduous prayers of my parents, namely Sigo and Petronia, obtained the sacred veil: one of whom was called Petronilla and the other Lucia. But my parents, when they perceived that they were coming to the end of their trial, admonished both me and my brother, by name Dalfinus, to keep our eyes open upon that monastery, and asked that God might deign to have mercy both on themselves and on their kindred, that is, the living and the dead.

[64] Not unmindful of this, while I remain in health, by which he granted it many goods desiring to fulfil the petition of my father and mother, I give in perpetuity to that same monastery out of my means which belong to me. And I give, in the bishopric of the church of Geneva, a church of my own right, dedicated in honour of St. Peter, with all its honour belonging to me in that same region, with the benefices and tithes and burials, all of which belong to that church. But in the district of Vienne, in the place which is called La Tour-du-Pin, I give round about all my honours there belonging to me. In all the aforesaid honours we have appointed bailiffs, at the request of the abbess of that same monastery, by name Radagundis, and of the congregation of that place, who should faithfully seek out the rents and tributes, and faithfully render them to the aforesaid abbess, both to her and to her successors. In like manner for Animonia, abbess of the above-named congregation of the same place, we have established bailiffs in the parish which is called Marines, and also in the village which is called Loimipagus, and in the manor of Brego a bailiff, so that whoever shall be introduced should give a hundred shillings to the abbess, and an under-bailiff sixty. And likewise at the change of an abbess. And in the receiving of the goods, that they should make oaths of fidelity to the abbess and the congregation of the monastery upon the altars, and should faithfully keep them.

[65] Now this institution has been made so that the bailiff should go to whatever place the abbess should order; and privileges, and that the under-bailiff, in his absence, should faithfully manage and dispense the profits of the lands at the command of the abbess and of the bailiff. Concerning the lands also to be ploughed, which they should judge the more profitable for ploughing — excepting those which the abbess shall have caused to be managed for the profit of the monastery — let them belong on such terms and in such manner to the bailiff and to the under-bailiff. But if those who receive them shall have made any building, let the building revert to the monastery itself: but if they wish to sell, let them give notice to the abbess before another, and sell to them more cheaply. Now the bailiff

or the under-bailiff, if they have begun to take up a haughtiness of eyes against the abbess, or have violently done anything unseemly, then — after a threefold summoning of the chapter of that monastery has been carried out — if they refuse to do right by the abbess, let them be expelled from every office, it being handed over to friends; but let the abbess seek out for herself men more serviceable.*

[66] The parish of Marines with the church of blessed John the Evangelist, & granted by others and the village of Dolomicuraticum with the church of blessed Peter, and lands and dwellings and groves, and the wood of Bregonium with the meetings of the waters, and the lands of Trequafenses and the lands of Bregonium, Albertus, a most noble man, gave to the monastery of blessed Peter of maidens — he who was one of the first converted not long after the passion of St. Irenæus and his companions — on account of two daughters whom he caused to be consecrated there: one was called Radagundis, and the other Aldagundis; and Perneta, the daughter of his brother, by name Silvinus, whom her father on dying left in his guardianship, and another, by name Sibylla, he likewise caused to be consecrated.

[67] granted The manor of Carpezatum was likewise given to blessed Peter the apostle by Stephen, a most illustrious man, on account of his daughter, by name Armingardis, whom he caused to be consecrated. But the manor of Increrata with its church two nobles gave to blessed Peter, of whom one was called Radulf and the other Constantine. This gift was made on account of their two daughters, of whom one was called Raimundia and the other Vandamodia. These, by God's disposition, were made abbesses of the same monastery one after the other. These aforesaid men gave the aforesaid gifts; which we confirm. Moreover we increase them from our own goods; namely we give them the dues of the aforesaid churches and the tithes of all their vineyards, and the offerings of the living and the burials of the dead belonging to them. Now these things, with God assenting and disposing, have been ordained by me in the presence of the chapter of that same monastery.

[68] he confirms. The said instrument shows some But if anyone shall by any presumption violate these decrees established by me, on the part of God the almighty Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and of blessed Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of St. Peter the prince of the apostles, and of all the Saints of God, we excommunicate him, and anathematize him, until they come to make amends both to the abbess and to the congregation in the chapter of that same monastery. So in Mabillon in the second Appendix of vol. 1 of the Benedictine Annals, p. 690. But I would not warrant it genuine on all sides and uncorrupted. At the very threshold that inscription is suspect to me: archbishop of the first see of the Gauls, and the use of that same word archbishop, presently twice repeated and too studiously sought after. I shall readily grant indeed that that name was at that time not unknown among the Franks, and even that it was sometimes used and ascribed by others to prelates; but I judge that few examples will be found in which the prelates of Gaul themselves attributed that title to themselves before the eighth or ninth century.

[69] marks of interpolation; Certainly hitherto I have found no example in any of our Saint's predecessors; nor can I sufficiently persuade myself that this was first practised by him with a kind of extempore delight in his own dignity, not to say — for the character of those times — with some ostentation of himself, contrary to the usage observed in his other public Acts. We have already cited above three instruments to which he subscribed: to the first he added to his name the word bishop, to the second sinner, to the third none; a fourth you have in Mabillon, vol. 1 of the Benedictine Annals, p. 449; to which he likewise subscribes thus: I Aunemundus, a sinner, consenting, subs. Hence I suspect that the words archbishop of the first see of the Gauls, with their repeated iteration, were afterwards intruded into St. Annemundus's Precept by a man who wished the excellence of the church of Lyons to be illustrated by so ancient a document; just as perhaps, to establish the antiquity of the monastery of St. Peter of Lyons, there were inserted into the same Precept the words read at num. 66: Who (Albertus) was one of the first converted not long after the passion of St. Irenæus and his Companions.

[70] Further, let these be held only for conjectures, not for certain indications of interpolation although not altogether certain. to which nothing can be opposed. For indeed he who shall contend that the precept is genuine on all sides will be able to reply to our first conjecture that the Precept is indeed St. Annemundus's, yet was drawn up not by himself but at his command and in his name by a notary, who of his own accord added the titles from which the Saint, in his modesty and humility, was accustomed to abstain when he subscribed public Acts with his own hand. But to the second conjecture he will reply that by the chronological notes attached to the name of that Albertus a great and marvellous antiquity of the monastery of St. Peter of Lyons is indeed designated; but that its falsity is not certainly proved from the document alleged by Mabillon as of better note, in which the monastery is said to have been founded by king Gaudisellus and queen Theudelinda, who according to Mabillon were reigning at Geneva at the beginning of the sixth century: for by the word founded a restoration can be indicated, just as it is indicated in Leidrad's Letter by the word instituted. Besides, granted, he will say, that the monastery's antiquity is not so great as those chronological notes present, it must not yet be concluded that the Precept is interpolated in that place; since the said notes could have proceeded from the ignorance or imprudence of that same notary or scribe.

[71] Further, no mark is supplied from which we might gather the year He seems also afterwards to have conferred other gifts upon it. in which the Precept was drawn up; but that it was made to corroborate privileges and gifts made by the Saint at various times I draw from this, that two different abbesses of the same convent are named, namely Radagundis and Animonia, at whose request the Prelate says that he appointed bailiffs: indeed, if the charter which Sévert cites at p. 149 of the second edition be sufficiently ancient and authentic, it is likely that after the Precept was made the Saint added other donations. For in it, after a brief recital of what he says in his Precept that he gave to the monastery in the dioceses of Geneva and Vienne, there is subjoined: Likewise in the bishopric of Nevers the church of St. Symphorian: likewise in the bishopric of Autun the church of St. Porsanus: likewise in the bishopric of Langres, etc. Then, a few words intervening, it proceeds thus: All the revenues which for the greater part those lady nuns hold and possess were given and bestowed by St. Annemundus in the time when he lived among men, for the love and zeal of charity which he had toward that monastery; and also other revenues, bestowed on those same nuns by other Catholics, were confirmed by that same St. Annemundus, as at Dolomacum, St. Symphorian, Charpiacum, Venicianum, Morencieu, etc. Finally it is added: Likewise St. Annemundus, to display the more the affection which he had toward the said monastery and his two sisters, ordained there his father's anniversary, and still every year it is celebrated in that church according to that constitution of St. Annemundus.* And so, according to this charter — of which Sévert supplies only fragments in the manner in which I have described — he conferred more upon the monastery than is expressed in the Precept, and that conferring may be reckoned to have been made after the Precept was drawn up.

[72] About the year 659 Of his other deeds in life nothing further comes to be discussed here; some lighter matters worth observing will be dealt with in the Annotations on the Acts: wherefore we settle what remains to be said about his death; for concerning it we have even now sent before many things on occasion of other questions which occurred. The opinions of various writers about the year of his death we set forth in §3: first of those who fixed 657 of Christ, with Mabillon as their leader, both elsewhere and particularly in the Dissertation on the year of the death of Dagobert I and Clovis the Younger; but he afterwards, in the Annals, vol. 1, p. 448 and following, changed his opinion, on account of the Privilege of Emmo, bishop of Sens, for the monastery of St. Columba, given in the third year of king Clothaire, that is, 658 or 659 of Christ, as the same Mabillon judges, and subscribed by St. Annemundus, who accordingly, he says, was still alive. Secondly of Pagi, who, on account of another Privilege of the said Emmo, given in the same year of Chlothaire, knit the Saint's death to the year 658, and maintained that it could not be deferred later on account of St. Wilfrid's Roman journey. Thirdly of Chifflet, who, since he would have Sigoberrand be the same as Annemundus, prolonged the latter's life down to the year 663. The first opinion the alleged Privileges overthrow; the second seems uncertain, because the reasons adduced by Pagi do not so bind that the death cannot be deferred to 659. The third rests on a corrupt text of the venerable Bede, as we have shown, and besides cannot be reconciled with St. Wilfrid's deeds between St. Annemundus's death and his taking up of the episcopate, on which more likely four or five years must have been spent: therefore we have marked the death about 659.

[73] he was killed in the territory of Chalon. The place of the slaying Bede and Eddius do not assign; concerning it the biographer has it thus: As the company of the people hastened into the territory of Chalon, they there pitched their tents not far from an estate of his church, and in the mid-silence of the night, while all there slept, he was secretly slain with the sword by two men suborned. The same territory of Chalon is likewise designated in the lessons of the Office of the nuns of St. Peter of Lyons. Hence more recent writers everywhere place the wrestling-ground of the martyrdom near Chalon, which is a city of Celtic Gaul in the duchy of Burgundy, episcopal under the archbishopric of Lyons, on the river Saône, commonly Chalon-sur-Saône. Sévert, however — whether from his own or from others' opinion I do not know — says: We find that he was killed in the city of Chalon. Then he recites the first antiphon at Vespers of the said Office of the nuns: At Chalon he is punished, at Lyons entombed, in heaven crowned. But I have no doubt that the city itself was here used for its territory, on account of the number or whatever metre.

[74] The manner of his death various writers As regards the manner of the slaying: if you consult Bede and Eddius, you would say that he was beheaded publicly, or at any rate with the leaders of the guards and lictors standing by along with St. Wilfrid. So Bede writes: Whom (the holy Bishop) indeed to the place where he was to be beheaded Wilfrid his clerk followed, desiring to fall together with him (though he himself much forbade it). But when the executioners learned that he was a stranger and sprung of the nation of the English, they spared him, and would not slaughter him with his Pontiff. So Eddius: The commanders most malignantly ordered (the Saint) to come to them. But he, with undaunted mind, not knowing what was to befall him, came to the place of the contest, and with him at the same time St. Wilfrid the servant of God, though the Bishop forbade it, who said rejoicing: "Nothing is better for us than that Father and son should die together and be with Christ." For now the holy Bishop was crowned with martyrdom. But when St. Wilfrid, stripped and likewise undaunted, stood ready for the palm of martyrdom, the commanders asked, saying: "Who is that comely youth, who prepares himself for death?" And it was said to them: "One from overseas, of the English nation, out of Britain." And again they said: "Spare him, and do not touch him."

[75] But our biographer, without even naming St. Wilfrid, report differently, says that St. Annemundus was secretly slain with the sword by two men on the way and by night, while all slept; that at first light, when the clerks approached the bed and uncovered his face, he was seen to be all drenched in blood, and that his body was found lifeless by the chief men of the army who had been summoned. Which narrative at first sight seems plainly different, and more agreeable to the true opinion by which it is laid down that the Saint was killed by treachery by envious men, without the knowledge or against the will of queen St. Bathildis. But if we discuss the matter with its circumstances a little more attentively, we shall find that the accounts do not so conflict with each other that what Bede and Eddius write cannot be true, and that at the same time the slaying was perpetrated in the manner which the biographer relates. And first indeed, if we consider the aim of each writer, we shall not wonder that St. Wilfrid's name and particular deeds were suppressed by the biographer. For him, aiming solely to describe the passion of St. Annemundus, it sufficed to indicate in general that there were priests and clerks in his company. Otherwise must we judge of Bede and Eddius, who touched upon the passion only so far as the fortitude of St. Wilfrid, their hero, might shine forth from it, and therefore out of the many things which they had in all likelihood heard from St. Wilfrid himself they selected only those which pertained more closely to him, the other circumstances being passed over; and hence some confusion has arisen.

[76] For my part I conceive the matter thus. St. Annemundus, ordered to come to the commanders and to commit himself to their custody, said, on the biographer's testimony: I shall go undaunted: and, being taken by his enemies, with cheerful face and brave speech he asked of the elders two priests and as many deacons and clerks in his company. Then Wilfrid (which the biographer had no need to explain particularly, but which the panegyrists of St. Wilfrid could not but suggest) could not bear to be torn from his Bishop, and followed him as he resisted, or, as the English write, forbade it, meaning to undergo the same lot with him. After this Annemundus, with undaunted mind, not knowing what was to befall him (being ignorant, that is, that he was to be put to death secretly and unheard), came to the place of the contest, as Eddius has it — that is, to the territory of Chalon, where they pitched their tents, as the biographer says. That same night he was secretly killed. But what the English authors write of Wilfrid, as though done at the same time, occurred in the morning; when, namely, the holy youth, beholding the body of his most beloved Father drenched in blood and lifeless, believed that the same lot was prepared for himself, and, when the commanders came up, undaunted offered himself to undergo it, and so on, which Bede and Eddius record, and which it did not concern our biographer to relate, aiming solely, as I have said, to set forth the murder of St. Annemundus.

[77] The said authors also express in different ways the kind of St. Annemundus's death. the same is the case with the kind of death. Eddius used the generic word to kill: Bede to slay, but, in mentioning the place, adds where he was to be beheaded, whence you might conjecture that his head was cut off; the biographer affirms that he was slain with the sword; but afterwards, in narrating that his body was found by the clerks, with the face uncovered, all drenched in blood, and by the commanders lifeless, he rather implies that he was stabbed through than beheaded: as is also read in the second Antiphon at Vespers of the Office: Pierced by the swords of the impious. To these must be added that, on Chifflet's testimony, among the nuns of St. Peter of Lyons there used formerly to be preserved, with his other relics, two knives with which he was believed to have been killed. These things, however, will be reconciled if we lay it down that by Bede the word behead was used for cut the throat, and by the biographer and others sword for any iron instrument of a savage murder. About the cause of the murder there is no question; that he suffered for justice's sake all agree, and therefore the biographer says that he endured martyrdom; Eddius that he was crowned with martyrdom; finally both ancient and more recent writers acknowledge him a Martyr, as we have sufficiently seen from what has been said before, and as will appear more fully from what is to be said.

perhaps administrationis*.

quem*.

§ VI. The place of burial, and the controversy that afterwards arose about it and about the possession of the body and long continued; whether and where the relics are now preserved.

[ ] The Saint's body, Eddius Stephanus in the often-cited Life of St. Wilfrid indicates clearly enough that our Saint was honourably buried, St. Wilfrid taking care of it or assisting; but he adds nothing from which we may learn the place of burial. The biographer in express words asserts that his body was carried to Lyons, and in the basilica of St. Peter the apostle (where the Saint himself had lately appointed that the poor should be fed out of his own provisions) entombed with worthy obsequies. Then, about to narrate a miracle wrought upon a man blind from birth at St. Annemundus's tomb, he says: When he had come to the church of St. Peter, where the holy Martyr's body lay, he was honourably and mercifully received by the nuns serving God there. And so many other testimonies confirm the same that it may seem strange that this matter was ever doubted. Nevertheless about it there was both sharp and long dispute between the said nuns and the canons of the church of St. Nicetius of Lyons, who contended that the holy body was laid in their crypts. Sévert handles the controversy at large in the second edition from p. 147 to 163, where he brings forward for the nuns twenty-four arguments in all, and for the canons thirteen. Those arguments — from which, however, we shall afterwards taste a few here and there for the cult — we leave to the curious reader to read and compare in him. For our purpose a brief and lucid account of that same controversy suffices, which, composed by our father Pierre-François Chifflet and drawn up in his own hand, we preserve among our manuscript collectanea, and which we here exhibit faithfully transcribed.

[79] which to the basilica of St. Nicetius Various changes has that building at Lyons undergone which was formerly commonly called that of the Holy Apostles and the XLVIII Martyrs, and is now called that of St. Nicetius. For that it was thrice destroyed Amedeus de Thalaru, archbishop of Lyons, affirms in a diploma given in the year MCCCCXVII: and, whereas in earlier ages it was the cathedral or metropolitan church, afterwards, in the year MCCL on the third of the Nones of August, having been burned by the Waldensian heretics, it was reduced to a parish church; and finally from the year MCCCV, sixteen canons having been instituted in it by archbishop Louis, it was restored to a collegiate church. Through these vicissitudes there arose among the common people, some five hundred years ago, the opinion that St. Annemundus's own body is contained in that basilica; although the nuns of St. Peter did not in the least doubt that they had possessed that sacred treasure from the time of his first burial. We saw formerly parchment volumes which contain the reasons of each of the litigating parties copiously set forth.

[80] There were in each church the bones of one human body, some ascribed, which on both sides were claimed for St. Annemundus with great contention of spirits. At his invocation not obscure miracles were wrought in each place, God approving the faith of the peoples on both sides, along with an error of fact on one side or the other. For even among the Nicetians infants were affirmed to have been raised at what was thought to be St. Annemundus's tomb; and very many others to have been thoroughly cured of various diseases, and especially of epilepsy: and among these illustrious men — Amedeus de Thalaru, archbishop of Lyons, and another Amedeus, duke of Savoy, who was afterwards believed to be Pope Felix V — were said to have been freed from gripings of the belly; whose testimonies, greater than any exception, propped up the Nicetian side wonderfully. Nor indeed was the case ever settled by the arbitration either of the prelates of Lyons or even of the Roman Pontiffs, or of judges delegated by them: but each party was left to its own belief, and was permitted to think its own St. Annemundus its own, and to set him forth for the veneration of the faithful peoples.

[81] Nevertheless the sounder and more learned party always stood with the nuns of St. Peter, in the church of the nuns of St. Peter namely on these arguments. First, on the authority of the more ancient Acts of St. Annemundus, which beyond all memory were preserved in the chief churches of the diocese of Lyons and were employed even in the divine Offices. For if any exist which favour the Nicetians, they have been interpolated by a more recent hand. Next, from the ancient Martyrologies of St. Stephen, St. Irenæus, St. Justus and the other churches of the city and territory of Lyons, from which it was read everywhere in the same sense, though sometimes differing in a few strokes: "On the fourth Kalends of October, at Lyons in Gaul, the birthday of St. Annemundus, bishop of Lyons and martyr of Christ. Now the aforesaid Martyr rests in the same city, namely at St. Peter's on this side of the Saône": so that, of course, the church of St. Peter of the nuns, on this side of the Saône and set on the left of the Saône, might be distinguished from the other building dedicated to the same prince of the Apostles across the Saône, and on the right of that same river, which is commonly the Church of St. Peter the Old. Further, that he had read it thus in the old Martyrology of the church of Aëre in the diocese of Belley is testified by John, by the patience of God bishop of Belley, in letters given on the VI Kalends of June MCCLIV: "On the fourth Kalends of October, at Lyons, of Annemundus, bishop and martyr, who rests in the church of blessed Peter of the nuns: and to whose body many sick coming, through prayers, God working, are there cured of the disease which is called the falling sickness."

[82] The miracles of St. Annemundus too occurred more frequently and more illustriously at St. Peter's: that he was first buried and preserved as, among others, that of the German blind from the womb, admonished by a divine revelation, and endowed with sight at the nuns' prayers. I do not mention that St. Annemundus himself had enriched with great wealth the church of St. Peter, founded (as it seems) at Lyons by his parents, at the exhortation of Sigo his father and Petronia his mother, who are buried in it, Sigo's anniversary being appointed there on the third of the Nones of October: and at the request of Viventius his predecessor (most Lyons records call him Viventiolus), who while still living had appointed him his successor in the archbishopric: and out of love of his two sisters, whom he had dedicated there, veiled, to Christ their spouse: handing over to that monastery La Tour-du-Pin in the diocese of Vienne, and whatever he had in the church of Geneva; besides these, in the bishopric of Nevers the church of St. Symphorian; in the bishopric of Autun the church of St. Pourçain, and several other places with rich revenues, and the right of appointing bailiffs in them, who should be answerable to St. Peter's of Lyons.

[83] the weightier arguments and testimonies I say nothing of the fact that the high altar of the church of St. Peter was consecrated under the names of St. Peter and St. Annemundus; that in that same church from ancient times a certain revelation of St. Annemundus is celebrated on the XXIII day of the month of August; that there, with the body of St. Annemundus, there used to be preserved a certain shirt of his with two knives, still stained with blood, by which he was said to have been killed, and a lamp famous for miracles, which once burned at his tomb; that the greatest bell of the church is named, as they say, from its baptism, St. Annemundus; that on the walls of that building, in the glass windows, on the banner customarily carried by the nuns through the city at Rogationtide, there stood images of St. Annemundus,

and of his sisters Petronilla and Lucia: all of which spoke of the presence of the sacred body in the basilica of St. Peter. Worth all of them to me is the testimony of Leidrad, who presided over the church of Lyons about a hundred and thirty years after St. Annemundus. He, rendering to Charlemagne an account of the things done by him, writes thus: "The monastery of maidens also, dedicated in honour of St. Peter, where the body of St. Annemundus the martyr is buried, which that holy Martyr and Bishop himself instituted, I have restored from the foundations, both the churches and the house: where now nuns to the number of thirty-two, living according to the regular institution, are seen to dwell. To whom also we have confirmed what the holy prelate and martyr Annemundus granted them while he lived: namely the dues of all their churches, and the tithes of all the vineyards which they have hitherto possessed, or shall hereafter, with God's help, possess. Likewise also the offerings of the living, and also the burials of all the dead who dwell in the countryside belonging to blessed Peter."*

[84] prove. In the church of St. Nicetius was buried the brother of St. Annemundus, It is therefore no longer permissible to doubt that the very body of St. Annemundus had its burial in the church of St. Peter of the nuns. For the rest, those seem to me to reason well who think this contention arose from an equivocation: that the Nicetians erred as to the Bishop, but did not err as to the martyr; that they were mistaken about Annemundus, but judged rightly about Dalphinus. For there were two brothers of the same surname, Dalphinus, the one prefect of Lyons, the other archbishop, who by his proper name was also Annemundus. Both the same cause made a martyr — the charge of treason fastened upon them by calumny and by envy. And the Acts of St. Annemundus give credit to it, in that, after his brother Dalphinus, prefect of Lyons, was struck with the axe at that assembly of Orléans, "his fellow-citizens carried his poor body away and gave it burial in the basilica of the Apostles, or of the forty-eight Martyrs"; and there was for him, as was fitting for a martyr, a most honoured place before the chief altar, where the more recent Nicetians affirmed that they had found their own Annemundus. Further, from the miracles which were said to have been wrought at this tomb at the invocation of St. Annemundus, no one would rightly infer that the very body of the holy Archprelate was laid there; but rather that of some one powerful in authority with God, whom it is reasonable to believe was the readier to bring aid to suppliants because they sought remedies from him whom nature had joined to him as a brother, and piety as a kinsman, and the cause of death as a Martyr, by the closest bonds.

[85] But the long battle of the two churches was cut short by that storm of the year MDLXII, but some relics of the latter, afterwards famous for miracles, in which the Calvinists, stronger in arms, despoiled the sacred buildings of the city of Lyons of all their wealth and ornaments: the relics of the Saints being either consumed by fire, or scattered into the waters, or impiously flung apart and dissipated over muddy embankments, through sewers, into the depths of ditches. Thus far Chifflet, to whose opinion I gladly subscribe, so far as it adjudges to the church of the nuns of St. Peter the first burial of St. Annemundus and the long possession (at least for the greater part) of the sacred body; which likewise, notwithstanding the arguments of the Nicetians, Sévert, Saussay and Raynaud had done before him, and several to be cited presently have done after him. But I do not equally adopt that same Chifflet's opinion about the miracles wrought at the invocation of St. Annemundus in the Nicetian church. I would rather judge that at some time there were granted by the nuns to the Nicetian church — once the metropolitan and the ordinary burial-place of the prelates of Lyons — some bones of St. Annemundus, which were there carefully preserved and perhaps laid away with the bones of his brother Dalfinus. Thus we understand that the miracles were wrought at true relics of the St. Annemundus who was invoked; thus we better grasp how the error of the Nicetians could gradually arise, who believed that the holy Prelate was buried among them.

[86] To this belong the things which, after relating the arguments of the litigants on both sides, Sévert observes: were formerly granted to that church: They (the Nicetian canons) do not deny that the sacred nuns possess many of the bones of so great a Man for several centuries past… And conversely the nuns allege that they do not hinder those same canons from laying away certain bones of this Saint, or from their being held in honour by the people in both places. But they will have it that the chief body, and thereby the right of the earliest burial is to be assigned to their monastic church. There is added Father de Colonia, vol. 1 of the Histoire littéraire of Lyons, last page, where, briefly pointing out the grounds by which the Nicetians were deceived into believing that the body of Dalfinus buried among them is the very body of St. Annemundus, he says that the third ground is: That some centuries ago a certain abbess of St. Peter's had deigned to grant to the church of St. Nicetius several portions of the relics of St. Annemundus, to be laid away with the relics of St. Dalfinus his brother. And this he asserts is confirmed by several ancient charters; and he cites besides two manuscript Works which he has by him: namely the Deeds of the archbishops of Lyons collected by Jean Colombi, whence he transcribes the following: Some part of the body of Annemundus was carried at an uncertain time to the church of St. Nicetius: and the Indices or Records for the sacred and profane history of the city of Lyons, arranged by Pierre Bullioud, whence he also recites this: Nor do the nuns deny that at St. Nicetius's some portion of that same sacred body is venerated.*

[87] Finally, although all whom I have seen attribute the burial to this day to the nuns, I have found no one who openly denies that some relics were in the Nicetian church. which even now, Théophile Raynaud in the Indiculus says: That a part, however, of the sacred relics (of St. Annemundus) was carried into the basilica of the Apostles (that, of course, which is now called the Nicetian), at one time the seat of the prelates, I am easily led to admit. Baillet at this day: It is not, however, incredible that some bone of our Saint is preserved in that collegiate church (of St. Nicetius); as some is also said to be preserved in the cathedral — the present one, that is, sacred to St. John the Baptist. More positively the author of the Office and Life of St. Annemundus printed at Paris in the year 1692: for he writes thus in French at p. 88: The body of St. Annemundus is now preserved in part in a precious shrine among the nuns of the noted abbey of St. Peter of Lyons, who for a long time have observed the Rule of St. Benedict: the other part is at St. Nicetius's.

[88] withdrawn from the fury of the heretics, Further, since both he and Sévert and the other authors cited in this and the preceding number wrote after the impious disaster inflicted on the churches of Lyons by the Calvinists, hence too it is clear in what sense Chifflet's last sentence is to be taken: namely in this sense, that that storm cut short the long battle of the two churches because, since at that time either the tombs of both churches were overthrown or some relics were dissipated or confounded with others, thereafter no inspection can duly be made, as it had been made before: although some, and perhaps the chief, relics of St. Annemundus were withdrawn from the sacrilegious fury of the heretics, and are today exposed at set times to the pious veneration of the faithful. What Baillet alone adds about relics in the cathedral of Lyons I find neither confirmed nor mentioned elsewhere. Perhaps he read somewhere that formerly there were relics in the cathedral, and did not notice that the ancient cathedral is designated, that is, the church of the holy Apostles, now the collegiate church of St. Nicetius.

[89] are believed to be preserved. At the Saint's invocation About the present relics of the Nicetian church Sévert relates this: But the few things which now remain to be narrated about that business are these, concerning certain bones of St. Annemundus existing in the Nicetian shrine. Certainly on a visitation we perceived that the sacristy of the church possesses one bone, which they there say is of that Saint's arm, besides other small bones of the same: the arm indeed set apart in silver caskets and visible through glass; but the remaining tokens likewise separately, mixed together in gilded silver. These are at times offered to be seen by pious petitioners. But he presently subjoins that some are of opinion that the relics are those of Dalfinus, who is known to be buried there, and who, they say, was also more probably a Martyr: and thus he leaves the matter undecided. That Dalfinus was a Martyr it is not ours to determine; but this seems sufficiently certain to us, that no special cult has hitherto been rendered to him, and that all has always been paid to his brother Annemundus, at the invocation of whose name alone the miracles were there wrought. About the concourse of the people to the said church and the frequency of miracles mention is made once and again in Sévert, but only in general terms in instruments formerly drawn up to prove the presence of the sacred body in it.

[90] very many miracles were there wrought; Thus at p. 159 of the second edition, from a codex of the fifteenth century, unless I am mistaken, the following are recited: Likewise in that church of St. Nicetius there were and are very many bodies of Saints, as much of former archbishops of Lyons as of others; and among the rest the body of the said St. Annemundus and his relics. Which Saints, and signally blessed Annemundus, daily work and furnish miracles. Likewise that on occasion of this there were wont to be held and performed there almost daily, and especially every year on the vigil of the feast of that same Martyr, very great vigils by pilgrims and the faithful of Christ, and a great rendering of vows to God and to the said Saint; and also very many offerings are offered, etc. Other things bearing on this you have above from Chifflet's manuscript account. The same Sévert at p. 160, from the Inventory, as he calls it, of the capitular Acts of the second book of the church of St. Nicetius, sets forth in particular a single miracle, though with several words cut away here and there.

[91] By the relation and exposition of the honourable Peter of the place of Étang in the diocese of Vienne, lately an infant of one year, one is related in particular. son of Francis Mistral, burgess of the city of Valence, was held by so grave an infirmity that death rather than life was expected. His mother most devoutly vowed him to God and to Bl. Annemundus, resting in the church of St. Nicetius of Lyons; so that if by the intercessions of that Bl. Annemundus the infant should obtain health, she would offer wax in that church to the weight of the infant, etc. She caused a Mass to be celebrated at the high altar in honour of that same blessed Annemundus. The vow being performed, the infant recovered health, as is firmly believed, of the blessed Annemundus, etc. In fact the parent paid it, etc. Concerning which, in the presence and copious multitude of the people, she asked that a testimonial charter be made for her by me, Apostolic notary and secretary of the said church; which I granted, in the presence of D. Stephen, James Porret, Claude de Grange, royal notary, etc. On Thursday the XXI of January MDVI, signed Chavet.

others, ecclesiam*.

read sepulturæ*.

§ VII. The ancient cult and its continuation; the inspection of the relics.

[ ] From the twofold history of the translation and of the miracles, Those things had to be premised which would make historically certain to us the burial of the sacred body in the church of the nuns of St. Peter, that we might with greater security and convenience produce the instruments pertaining to the translation from the territory of Chalon into the said church, to the miracles wrought in it, to the visitations of the relics, and to their cult down to

our own times. Of the translation and the miracles we have two Histories, the one annexed to the Acts of the martyrdom and in all likelihood written by their author; the other inserted into the little book of the Office printed at Lyons in the year 1631, and divided into lessons to be recited by the nuns through the Octave. Neither author is known to us, neither supplies so much as a single word from which it may be conjectured in what age they flourished. The first, however, I judge the more worthy of credit, because its narrative, so far as it contains the translation of the body from the territory of Chalon to Lyons, is plain and simple; that of the other is nothing but a continuous heap of prodigies, and of such a kind indeed that, if they had truly happened, the first author — whether he was older or more recent than the second — would neither have been ignorant of them nor have passed them over.

[93] However that may be, from the miracles and benefits which both authors narrate to have been wrought in the same church of St. Peter [and from other testimonies the ancient cult in the church of St. Peter is established,] after St. Annemundus's relics were laid there, we draw out at least the antiquity and celebrity of the cult. But we are also made the more secure about it by the testimony of Leidrad, prelate of Lyons in the eighth and ninth centuries, who, when in his letter to Charlemagne, recording that the said church together with the monastery was restored by him, he expressly adds Where the body of St. Annemundus is buried, does not permit us to doubt that both his memory was famous there and the veneration of the sacred relics was great. For the tenth century Sévert brings forward a fragment of an old document, of which he thus speaks at p. 150: One letter of Austerius, the LXI archbishop of Lyons, confirms, or rather nourishes and increases the monument of St. Annemundus among the nuns, in the year DCCCCX, in consequence of a rescript of Pope Sergius III, given in the month of July, in the XIII Indiction. Which letter, however, since it seemed much corrupted by the antiquity of time and the carelessness of copyists, we retain from it here only those things which are beyond doubt. Presently he subjoins the words of the letter: Again, when on the anniversary day of St. Annemundus, martyr and bishop, we had visited his body at the nuns of St. Peter, out of reverence for the holy place we bestowed an alms slender indeed, but as generous as we could out of our means. Austerius, as is proved in vol. 4 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana, held the see of Lyons in the year 910, in which Sergius III also occupied the Chair of St. Peter; but in the ancient catalogues of the prelates of Lyons, as in the said Gallia Christiana, Austerius is set down as bishop fifty-third in order, not sixty-first.

[94] to which Pope Innocent IV granted indulgences From the tenth century we leap over to the thirteenth, in which, for the sake of the relics of St. Annemundus, indulgences were granted by Pope Innocent IV to the often-mentioned church of the nuns of St. Peter. The autograph of the Bull, on whose leaden seal, hanging by silken threads, these words are inscribed, Pope Innocent IV, Sévert testifies that he read through, and thus exhibits it transcribed, at pp. 150 and following: Innocent, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God. To all the faithful in Christ, to the abbess and convent of the monastery of St. Peter of the nuns of Lyons, greeting and Apostolic blessing. Although he of whose gift it comes that he should be worthily and laudably served by his faithful, out of the abundance of his mercy, which exceeds the merits and vows of suppliants, repays those who serve well far more than they can deserve; nevertheless, desiring to render to the Lord an acceptable people, we invite the faithful of Christ to please him by certain enticing gifts, as it were — namely by indulgences and remissions — that we may thereby be rendered the more fit for divine grace.

[95] on account of the presence of the body of St. Annemundus. Since therefore, as you have taken care to set forth to us, the body of St. Annemundus rests in your monastery, and to that same monastery, out of reverence for that Saint, by whose merits several are cured of the falling sickness, there flocks on his feast the devout people of the faithful: We, desiring that the same monastery be frequented with fitting honours, to all who are truly penitent and have confessed, and who shall yearly visit that monastery reverently in memory of that same Saint, trusting in the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, mercifully relax forty days of the penance enjoined upon them. Given at Perugia, on the II of April, in the IX year of our Pontificate — that is, 1252 of Christ, not 1251, which Sévert marks. For Innocent IV ascended the Roman chair only at the close of June of the year 1243, and accordingly in the month of April of the year 1251 the eighth year of his pontificate was still running. Besides, Innocent, as François Pagi shows in the Breviarium of the deeds of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. 3, p. 321, arrived at Perugia only in the month of November of the year 1251; and thus the month of April, in which the Bull was there given, must belong to the following year.

[96] To the two instruments now given Sévert prefixes several indications of an ancient and notable cult, which were formerly collected and committed to writing to prove St. Annemundus's burial among the nuns. Several indications of a notable cult The antiquity of the charters from which he took them the author does not teach, only indicating that they are preserved in the archives. For my part I suspect they were drawn up in the fourteenth century, not far advanced — when, that is, the suit between the nuns and the Nicetian canons chiefly began to flourish. Further, what he recites from the said charters is as follows: The greater part of the Priories of the said monastery are founded under the name of Bl. Annemundus: and in them every year great vigils are held, especially nocturnal ones, in honour of St. Annemundus — in French Vogues — with a concourse of men and women… The high altar of the said church (of the nuns) has been erected in memory of the blessed Peter and Annemundus: where daily one Eucharistic Mass is chanted, and on feast days another at a small altar adjoining, commonly called the Mass of St. Annemundus: and above it is raised an ancient image of the said Saint in pontifical vestments… In the belfry of the church is a great bell named from most ancient times, and even at present, St. Annemundus. Likewise in the glasswork, the chapel, and other places or ancient paintings of the church there is painted the image or figure of St. Annemundus with the life, deeds and merits of his passion.

[97] The banner of the church, customarily carried through the city of Lyons, Sévert gives, collected and committed to writing, is most ancient. The nuns and their predecessors were wont to furnish it at Rogationtide and at the solemnity of the most sacred Body of Christ: on which is seen painted the image of Bl. Annemundus with pontifical infulæ, and also the images of his two sisters. Nay more, on the said days the nuns have been accustomed, for so long a time that there is no memory to the contrary, to have it carried, those ladies going in procession to the church of St. Nicetius, in the sight of all. Likewise those same ladies were wont at the said times to have carried also a shrine or chest, very ancient, bound with silver and covered with a silken cloth, in which lie hidden the bones and relics of St. Annemundus. As a token of which thing there is the image of the Saint carved on that cloth with sacred vestments and these very ancient letters: St. Annemundus. Which chest the nuns, then walking in procession, are wont devoutly to lay upon the high altar of that church of St. Nicetius and to keep it there, until the stations, prayers and suffrages celebrated by them at that time are completed: with all the canons knowing it and not gainsaying.

[98] The church of St. Nicetius, first cathedral, then parochial, drawn up, as it appears, in the fourteenth century. was erected into a collegiate church by archbishop Louis de Villars, sixteen canons being instituted there, in the year 1305, as Chifflet, cited in the preceding §, notes, and as is clear from the diploma of that same prelate in Sévert, p. 315; wherefore, since in the words just recited express mention is made of canons, there can be no doubt that they were drawn up after the said year. Nothing, however, prevents our thinking that they began to be collected not many years afterwards; since Chifflet in the margin of one manuscript transcript of the Acts of St. Annemundus cites Informations made in the year 1308 for the truth of the body of St. Annemundus, which are contained in a parchment volume of the archive of St. Peter of the nuns. And Sévert advises that it must be noted, on the last sentence of the words, that from a hundred years ago, at which time the Religious were reformed (about the year 1513, as the enlarged Gallia Christiana, vol. 4, col. 288, has it), they no longer go out in procession or otherwise. Finally he recites the following from his charters: In the said church of St. Peter, and before the tomb of St. Annemundus, there was a lamp in honour of the holy Martyr, supplied and lit with the liquor of oil, which was never diminished. A lamp of this kind our biographer too mentions at num. 13: but Sévert also adds a miracle: A certain blind man, when he approached the tomb, having struck the lamp himself and, the oil being spilt, anointing his eyes with it, received his sight. He does not indicate whence it was taken or when that miracle occurred: but if I rightly perceive his meaning, fragments of the lamp were still preserved while he was writing, and the miracles did not cease: Whence, he says, the lady nuns have the fragments of the lamp: with whose oils many sick, solemnly touched, continue to be cured there of various diseases.

[99] In the year 1456 an inspection of the relics was made, In the year 1456 a recognition of the sacred remains was made in the church of the nuns. The instrument drawn up upon that recognition and preserved in the archives of the nuns Sévert cites at p. 151, and thence transcribes several things pertaining chiefly to our Saint's relics at p. 152; the rest he reduces to a summary. A transcript of the same instrument Papebroch left us, drawn up in his own hand and beyond doubt taken from the autograph, while he was staying at Lyons in the month of June of the year 1662, on the twenty-fourth day of which he noted this in the little book on his Return from Rome into Belgium: Most kindly received among the nuns of St. Peter, we transcribed the ancient Acts of St. Annemundus, and venerated the relics which were able to escape the hands of the heretics. The heading of the instrument is such: To the Rev. father and lord D. John of Amanzé, chamberlain of the church of Lyons and vicar-general of the most reverend Father and Lord John of Bourbon, bishop of Le Puy, count of Velay, bishop-elect of Lyons… Bertrand Merlet … Prior of St. Julian, and Antoine Bertrand … canon of St. Paul. Know ye, etc. Here Papebroch, just as he cut away some things here and there for brevity's sake, in which the titles of persons or other less necessary matters were contained, so he omitted entire the commissory letters of the said John of Amanzé to the aforesaid Bertrand Merlet and Antoine Bertrand, which had been inserted into the instrument, as is clear from what follows.

[100] whose report is exhibited After the receipt of which foregoing letters, we the aforesaid officials and commissaries betook ourselves personally to the aforesaid monastery of St. Peter, and, having taken with us Bartholomew Bellièvre, citizen of Lyons and notary… And while we were there before the high altar of that church, the venerable and religious sister the lady Alexandra de Vassel, abbess, and the other religious of the said monastery, gathered there in great number, set forth to us that in a certain case which is wont to be kept upon the aforesaid altar, and also in divers other cases and repositories existing in the same church, there are several relics of divers*

Saints and holy women, and chiefly of Bl. Annemundus, which are venerated in the same church and have from of old been wont to be venerated: which case we … vested in copes and surplice, and the light of that church being lit, in the presence of the said ladies, and also of very many other persons as much ecclesiastical as secular … with all humility, reverence and devotion opened, and thence found that in that case the following relics were laid up. Here are enumerated various relics which were wrapped in separate cloths without inscription or name of a Saint, so that it is uncertain whether those remains were of St. Annemundus or of another Saint. Joined to them, however, a certain small folding knife with a bone handle worn away for the greater part was in all likelihood one of those by which our Martyr is believed to have been stabbed through.

[101] Likewise in a certain great linen cloth, it proceeds thus, from the instrument we found the following bones; namely two bones of the shins of the legs, from the cup of a man's head, one rib; and there is there a slip written in an ancient hand thus: The bones of St. Anemundus; and the said bones are large and thick. Likewise in a certain other cloth, where there is another slip, written thus: The head of Bl. Anemundus and a corporal from the Mass: and there are there a head and two bones from the loins and one long bone, and it seems to be the front bone of the shin, and one corporal. Likewise in a certain linen cloth, where there is a slip written thus: This is of the bones of St. Andrew, and there is one rib and one bone of the shin, and the aforesaid are wrapped together in a certain linen cloth. Likewise in another linen cloth, where there is a slip: These are the relics of St. Prusilia; and there are there several bones without a head; namely of the shins, the arms and the ribs. Hence it proceeds to the inspection of two other cases, in which were found several relics without any indication of the Saint, male or female, whose they were; others with inscriptions; and in one indeed the relics of the holy Thecla and Dorothea; of St. Trophimus, St. Maurice, St. Riquier, from the sepulchre of the Lord, of St. Vedast, St. Amandus and St. Pothinus with his companions. In the other, of St. Lupus the bishop.

[101] At length it comes to the fourth case, whose inspection is thus set forth: then drawn up. Likewise further the aforesaid religious ladies exhibited to us a certain other small case of wood decently covered, which with great devotion is carried and has been wont to be carried in the processions of the said religious ladies at Rogationtide, which we also opened and found and saw that in it there were one slip written on parchment, in which are wrapped two thick bones of the arms, in a certain linen cloth, wrapped in another silken cloth worked in divers colours: and the said slip is thus written: These are the arms of St. Annemundus. All and each of which relics we the aforesaid officials and commissaries, after we had seen them … in the presence of those above, and in their former places, in which they had been laid up, restored and left, and all the aforesaid… These things were done in the aforesaid monastery on the III day of the month of May MCCCCLVI, in the IV Indiction, in the II year of Calixtus III.* In the autograph there were subjoined the subscriptions of the commissaries and of the notary; but these too Papebroch omitted.

perhaps existentibus*.

i.e. of wood: Sévert reads marmote*.

§ VIII. The celebrity of the feast and the ecclesiastical Office at Lyons in the collegiate church of St. Nicetius and that of the nuns of St. Peter, and in other churches elsewhere, especially at Paris in the church dedicated to his name of the Seminary of the maidens of the Christian Union.

At Lyons the feast is celebrated with an ecclesiastical Office: Just as it is sufficiently clear from what has been said above that the annual festivity of St. Annemundus was celebrated with solemn rite for many centuries in the church of the nuns of St. Peter, so we have no doubt that the same was done in like manner in the basilica of St. Nicetius, where the body of St. Annemundus was also believed to be preserved. But that in the fourteenth century a new and general festivity of the Saint was instituted throughout the whole city and perhaps the whole diocese, Sévert signifies at p. 346, where, citing the third book of the Acts of the chapter of Lyons, he says: In the aforesaid year MCCCXCIII, and then in the year XCIX, there were instituted in the chapter the feasts of St. Annemundus and of the holy Cross: whether, that is, those feast-days be thought to have been established only for the performing of the divine Offices, or also for a cessation from profane business through the middle of the city thronged with people. He does not add in what manner those festivities were performed in his own age; and even from this we judge that, if ever that constitution involved a cessation from servile work, that manner had long since been abrogated. I have not to hand the present Breviary of Lyons, or any recently printed Calendar, from which I might learn with what rite the Saint's festivity is now celebrated in the churches of the city and throughout the diocese: that an Office and Mass of him are performed, however, I gather from our manuscript book entitled Calendar and Lives of the Saints of the Breviary of Lyons, to be printed and likewise recited according to the form of Trent. For that book was made about the middle of the last century, and has these words in the month of September: On the day XXVIII, on the feast of St. Annemundus, martyr and bishop; there presently follow three lessons, composed partly from the Acts, partly from the History of the translation.

[104] with a more solemn rite in St. Nicetius's. At the end of the same book there is given the Proper Calendar of those Saints whom the Nicetian church of Lyons keeps as feasts; and hence we draw out that the feast is solemnly celebrated with an Octave. For at the day XXVIII September these words are marked: Annemundus, bishop of L. and martyr, IX lessons; but at the V of October this: The Octave of St. Annemundus, bishop and martyr. And this indeed seems to be peculiar to our Saint there; since through the whole Calendar no mention is made of the Octave of any other Saint. As regards the church of the nuns of St. Peter, there was published at Lyons in the year 1631 a particular little book for the royal monastery of St. Peter of Lyons, containing first the Office to be recited on the feast-day of St. Annemundus. At first Vespers, which are to be recited with a double rite, proper Antiphons are given, adapted to his Acts and martyrdom; the Chapter, Blessed is the man that endureth, etc.; the rest are to be taken from the Common of one martyr: but this Collect is prescribed: Be favourable to us, we beseech thee, O Lord, through the glorious merits of this thy holy martyr and pontiff Annemundus (who rests in this present church), that by his pious intercession we may be protected from all adversities. Through our Lord, etc.

[105] At Matins the Invitatory is this: Let us adore the Lord triumphant in his elect, and that of the church of the nuns of St. Peter through whom the prelate Annemundus conquered the punishments of men. The Hymn, Antiphons and Psalms at the Nocturns are from the same Common. In the first Nocturn four proper lessons taken from the Acts; in the third likewise four from a Homily of St. Athanasius the bishop upon the Gospel of St. Matthew, When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. The Responsories indeed are proper, but not to be transcribed here, inasmuch as they are everywhere taken from the same Acts. In the same manner are composed the Antiphons at Lauds and second Vespers, except the first, which runs thus: May the tomb of Annemundus, piously sought out, be the eye of the blind, the hearing of the deaf, the staff of those who have the falling sickness, the shore of the shipwrecked: and at the Benedictus, as follows: Hear our prayers, holy martyr Annemundus, and bear them to God. Remember, good Shepherd, thy sheep, who seek the help of thy intercession; pray assiduously for us all with the Saints to whom thou art joined: that we may be saved by the grace of God. There is here also a different Collect, couched in these words: Grant, we beseech thee, almighty Father of eternal consolation, through the prayers of this thy holy martyr and pontiff Annemundus, peace and salvation to thy people: that it may cleave to thy commandments with all love, and with all love may accomplish the things that are pleasing to thee. Through our Lord, etc. The same is to be said at all the Hours and at second Vespers, in which this Antiphon also is assigned at the Magnificat: Hail, King of the nation of the Franks, Soldier of the King of angels, O Annemundus, flower of martyrs, like a rose or a lily, pour forth prayers to the Lord for the salvation of the faithful.

[106] The Office of the day being thus ordered, there are subjoined rubrics for the Octave, with an Octave: here he has also a feast on the 23rd of August. among which the first and most notable is that the days of the Octave begin only on the XIX of October: I believe because the preceding days are too much occupied by other and more solemn Offices. For the rest, for each of the days of the Octave down to the fifth, three lessons from the Acts are given; but for the following ones from the History of the translation and the miracles, which I shall print entire after the Acts; namely three lessons for the fifth, sixth and seventh days, but eight for the last day, when a double Office of twelve lessons is performed. Besides this chief festivity of the holy Prelate, the said nuns celebrate another on the XXIII day of August, as Chifflet testifies in his account, which we exhibited above in §6, saying thus: In the same church from ancient times a certain revelation of St. Annemundus is celebrated on the XXIII day of the month of August. But at what time, and in what manner, or on what occasion that revelation took place, or with what rite it is celebrated, neither does he explain, nor do I find it explained by another.

[107] Nor does anything anywhere occur by whose help I might elucidate He is doubtless honoured with an Office in other churches dedicated to him. the words which, on Sévert's testimony, are marked in the archives of the monastery: The greater part of the Priories of the said monastery are founded under the name of Bl. Annemundus, and in them every year great Vigils are held, especially nocturnal ones, in honour of St. Annemundus — in French Vogues — with a concourse of men and women. It is to be believed, however, that his annual cult flourishes even now as much in these places as in those of which Baillet speaks thus: He (our Saint) is honoured as a Martyr in most of the churches which have been erected to his invocation. Some of these have given his name to the places in which they are situated. Among the more notable places of this kind is the town of St. Annemundus (la ville de Saint-Chamond) in the district of Forez. Of the same place Valois treats in the Notitia Galliarum, p. 22: Not far, he says, from the city of Lyons, in the district of Forez, stands out the castle of St. Annemundus, famous for the name of the bishop of Lyons, whom they commonly call Chanemundus. La Martinière in the French geographical Dictionary at the word St. Chamond adds that in that town there is a college of canons consecrated to St. Annemundus. Thence you may conjecture with what cult the Patron both of the town and of the collegiate church is honoured.

[108] At Paris in the seminary of the maidens of the Christian Union, But nowhere in so short a space of time has the Saint's

cult been raised to a higher degree of splendour than lately at Paris in the Seminary of maidens which has been given the name of the Christian Union. For the understanding of this matter it will be helpful to trace the beginnings of the said Seminary or congregation a little further back, according to what is related by the author of the little book presently to be mentioned, by M. Herman in vol. 4 of the History of the religious Orders and of the regular and secular congregations, and by Hippolyte Helyot, or his continuator, in vol. 8 of a fuller History of the same kind. Marie de Lumague, a matron of Lyons origin, had at Paris, even while her husband, M. Pollalion, royal counsellor, was living, withdrawn several maidens from the perils of the world, and committed them to be piously brought up and instructed. Her husband being dead, she formed out of those same maidens a congregation for instructing other and likewise younger maidens, which she willed to be called of Divine Providence, and whose governance she committed to two virgins summoned from Lyons for that end. This work being completed with the approval of all, she was meditating another congregation, or a seminary of virgins and widows, whose institute should be to labour at the conversion of heretical virgins and women, and at the instruction of the newly converted. But death cut short her pious design in the year 1657.

[109] which was instituted at the close of the seventeenth century, Nor yet did the conceived work lack its effect; M. Antoine le Vachet, a secular priest, formerly a sharer of her counsels and a helper in her labours, undertook to complete it. He, to lay its foundations, chose two virgins, the chief disciples of the said Marie, who with others desirous of the pious institute erected the first Seminary under the title of the Christian Union at Charonne, a village near Paris. In the year 1683, however, the same seminary was transferred into the city itself. Now it came about — the words are those of the author cited in the first place — at the close of the seventeenth century, that maidens devoted to God under the title of the Christian Union, gathered in great number at Paris, procured for themselves a house in this city, which had long been called the Palace of St. Enemundus (in French l'Hôtel de Saint-Chaumond); and thus it came about that that Saint, the first author of congregations of this kind, seemed of his own accord to offer himself to those maidens as patron and protector. Thus he at the end of the sixth lesson of the Office of St. Annemundus, or, as he writes it, Enemundus, composed for that same congregation. But when I attend to what the same author afterwards relates at the end of the Saint's Life written in French, it appears to me likely enough that, just as the beginnings of the said seminary may in some fashion be ascribed to the pious ardour of the said Marie de Lumague, so also the notable cult which that Saint has today at Paris drew its origin from her devotion toward St. Annemundus.

[110] and consecrated with its church to St. Annemundus, For that author testifies that, when that pious matron was staying at Lyons in the year 1644 to promote a work of charity, she often visited the church of St. Peter of the nuns, and poured out prayers before the relics of St. Annemundus. Hence it is easy to conjecture that she did this in order to commend her endeavours to that Saint, once the director and founder of sacred virgins, and to take him as Patron for the congregations of virgins and maidens which she was meditating. This devotion, in all likelihood, and this confidence in the Saint's patronage she afterwards instilled into her sisters of Divine Providence; and these afterwards, chosen to begin the seminary, transfused the same into the sisters of the Christian Union, and fostered it among them; until, with the title of the Paris house — into which the seminary was transferred, and in which a church was erected in the year 1685 — conspiring to the same end, both this and the seminary itself were consecrated to that same Saint. And that they were consecrated to him is made certain to us by the Paris Spiritual Calendar (Almanach spirituel), which is wont to be published in print in French every year, and in which are designated the festivities, confraternities, indulgences, sermons, and like exercises of piety which are held on each day in the churches of the city. For in the copies of that Calendar which we have, most of them published from the year 1697 to 1712, these words are marked at the day XXVIII September: St. Annemundus, archbishop of Lyons, martyr. At St. Annemundus's in the Rue Saint-Denis (in which the seminary is situated) the titular feast, plenary indulgences, exposition (of the Venerable Sacrament), a sermon.

[111] The celebrity of the feast is clearly set forth by the little book several times named, printed at Paris in the year 1692 under this title: he has a solemn feast with a proper Office, The Office and Life of St. Annemundus, bishop of Lyons and martyr, first founder of the congregations of secular maidens in France. The Office, which is prescribed to be performed at the day XXVIII September with a great solemn rite, is elegantly composed and almost wholly proper. The lessons of the first Nocturn are from the Epistle of the Apostle St. Paul to the Philippians, Grace to you and peace from God, etc.; those of the second Nocturn contain a historical summary of the Life, the martyrdom, the translation of the body, and the cult; those of the third Nocturn are taken from a Homily of St. Augustine on the Gospel according to John, chap. 13, Little children, yet a little while I am with you, etc. The rest is accommodated to the care which the Saint once bore for sacred virgins, to the fortitude with which he underwent martyrdom, and to the charity by which it befits the sisters of the Christian Union to be joined together. For brevity's sake I transcribe only the Hymns and the Collect.

Hymn at first and second Vespers

Lo, thee, added to the citizens above, whose hymns at Vespers, Matins

whom the bright purple of thy poured-out blood

adorns, the throngs with one accord

salute, Enemundus, in thy triumph.

Thou art not puffed up by thy noble lineage;

and thou who didst raise up from the sacred stream

a royal child, sponsor in the faith,

dost not applaud thyself for that lofty title.

Constrained, thou yieldest: the pious city,

Christ calling thee, seeks thee for its pontiff:

and from that highest stage, by thy merits,

how the tiara shines!

Gathering maidens into fixed houses,

as guardian thou governest the virgin flocks,

whom thou dost join in Christian bond

and in an equal piety.

Highest praise be to the Father, and highest to the Son,

and equal praise to thee also, O Spirit,

by whose breathing kindly peace fills

hearts allied by pious bonds. Amen.

At Matins

The sisters fly ahead of the sacred bands;

thou shinest a bright beam upon the chaste array;

the fold, of one mind, with thee for Master,

fears not the ravening lions.

O thou who art girt with a gleaming infula,

join our minds by an everlasting covenant

to the Godhead, grant that we may enter

the nuptial hall of those above.

Highest praise, etc.

At Lauds

Why does the gnashing robber prepare his snares? and Lauds

Why does he oppress thee, Priest, who hast deserved nothing?

Whatever he dares, he shakes in nothing

the undaunted citadel of thy lofty mind.

Driven from thy sacred throne, the savage soldiers

bound thee with a hard fetter:

and through the blackening shadows of the night

they run thee through with sharp swords.

So many darts, Shepherd, thou stoutly receivest;

thy nurslings mourn, and with them the light of England,

the great Wilfrid; and the whole city,

dissolved in tears, lies squalid.

Then the sorrowing flock of virgins too

gathers the consecrated pledges into their church,

and venerates the fatherly limbs,

a deposit to be beheld of heaven.

Highest praise, etc.

The Collect.

Save, O Lord, the family dedicated to thee in Christian union, and by the intervention of the blessed martyr Enemundus, thy pontiff, grant that, every danger of contention being removed, it may glorify thee for ever by a willing confession. Through our Lord. The same collect is read in the Mass, likewise proper, in which moreover this is the secret: Receive with fatherly kindness, O God, the gifts of the family united to thee, which flees to thee under the protection of blessed Enemundus, and grant that by his example we may both constantly endure the assaults of persecutors, and hasten with fervent devotion to the heavenly kingdoms. And this after the Communion: Grant us, we beseech thee, O Lord, through these sacred Mysteries a will persevering in the union of charity, that in the fellowship of thy holy pontiff Enemundus we may be able to obtain the crown of eternal glory. Further, through the Octave of St. Annemundus, since most days — indeed perhaps all — are there occupied by the Offices of other Saints, only a commemoration of him can be made, except on the last day, when the Office of the feast-day is read with a lesser double rite, and the Office of St. Aurea the abbess is transferred to the VII of October. But his memory too, as Patron, is made daily, when required by the Rubrics, in the common suffrages, as follows: At Lauds. Ant. The persecutors seized him in the midst of straits: his priests groaning; his virgins in squalor. Versicle. I spoke of thy testimonies in the sight of kings. ℞ And I was confounded. Let us pray. May we be aided, we beseech thee, O Lord, by the suffrages of St. Enemundus, who praises thee for ever, and be protected by his merits. Through Christ our Lord. ℞ Amen. At Vespers. Ant. There was a house in which chosen virgins were kept: he bore the care of their salvation. Versicle. The Lord leading out the bound one in strength. ℞ He shall give the word to the women that preach the gospel. Let us pray. Save, O Lord, the family*, etc., as above.

[115] To these are subjoined the Rubrics for a votive Mass of St. Annemundus, customarily recited, are given from the little book, approved by the bishop. and finally the approbations of the whole Little Book and the licence to print. In his own, the archbishop of Paris speaks thus: François, by divine mercy and the grace of the holy Apostolic See archbishop of Paris, duke and peer of France, commander of the royal orders: that the present Office may be publicly chanted in our diocese, we grant licence by these presents. Given at Paris in the year of the Lord one thousand six hundred and ninety-two, on the twenty-ninth day of the month of August. François, Archbishop of Paris. The same little book also embraces the Saint's Life, or rather a synopsis both of his deeds in life and of other matters pertaining to his posthumous glory. It is written in French, in order, as I conjecture, that it may be read aloud every year on the feast-day in the refectory to the sisters of the Christian Union as they sit at table. It is a little lucubration learnedly arranged. The author used the Works of Bede, of Eddius Stephanus and the best records of others, and everywhere in controverted matters followed the more probable opinions of more recent scholars. But since the Work is so recent, and contains nothing which the reader could not have known abundantly from what has been said above, it does not require a place here.

Psalm: and I was not*.

ACTS

By an anonymous author

Collected from various manuscripts by Pierre-François Chifflet, S.J.

Annemundus, otherwise Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons, martyr, in the territory of Chalon in Gaul. (S.)

BHL Number: 0506

A. By an Anonymous Writer.

The Author's Preface. Long since the virtues of the martyrs, divinely wrought, still illuminate the world, and their bodies, planted in the earth, double the stars of heaven like constellations. Finally, those also who have followed the rule of their passions will be like them in the condition of their virtues. Ever is the heavenly Jerusalem built up of living and chosen stones, as a city, and rejoices to be gradually restored none the less by the gathering of holy souls. And with no much lesser glory does the earth too, made fruitful with the blood of the martyrs, now exult, suffused with a rosy blush. We must strive, therefore, that while the merits of these penetrate the heavens, their limbs on earth may be made a salvation to men. Nor do we count it sloth to fix in that place the reward of the faithful, whose virtues stand out among the people from on high. Therefore I shall set forth the life of Dalfinus, or of blessed Annemundus, ^a and again describe his passion.

[2] He was therefore of the most illustrious man Sigo the prefect

and of Petronia the son, [The Saint's birth; his episcopate; his favour with the kings; the hatred of the malevolent.] and was reared and brought up in the palaces of king Dagobert ^b and of Clovis ^c his son, who reigned in his stead: a Roman, however, by nation, ^d always endowed with the honour of jurisdictions, and honoured with public magistracies. For he was a spare man, affable, quick and witty, brave and humble, prudent and just, gentle in rebuke, victorious in disputations, just in judgment, foremost in goodness, kindly in almsgiving, conspicuous in generosity, for he was also ample in means. Meanwhile it came about that he was chosen by Viventiolus, bishop of Lyons, into his place: whom, while he yet stood there, the grace of Christ consecrated as pontiff. ^e Finally the Lord had conferred so great a grace upon him that he was signally venerated among the people, and neighbouring nations from afar strove to win his favour with their gifts. Yet he was so acceptable to the kings and nobles that whatever he asked of them he obtained, and no one was able to obtain anything whatever for his own advancement unless he carried it to prince Clothaire III ^f at his suggestion, who had been his godson from the sacred bath of the font. ^g Therefore, while he claimed the glory of his eminence and an outstretched arm, and moreover seemed loftier than his brethren in the assembly, he fell into the hatred of all. They began to treat him seditiously, saying under a clandestine accusation that he was plotting in secret to overthrow the kingdom of that same Clothaire, at that time the prince.

[3] His brother, falsely accused, is killed, Meanwhile an assembly was made by the king's command in the suburb of the city of Orléans, in a manor which is called Maroialum, ^h built near there: to which the nobles and elders and commanders coming, with the customary gathering of the people, believed that the blessed Prelate would be present with his brethren: who, still weary from the illness with which he had lately laboured, was not able to come. Then they revealed the guile they had conceived against the blessed Pontiff, and his own brother, ⁱ who held the prefecture of Lyons (which is the head of Gaul or of the other cities) eminently, the king or queen Baldechild beheaded on a false charge of infidelity, ^k and his fellow-citizens carried his poor body away and gave it burial in the basilica of the Apostles, or of the forty-eight Martyrs. ^l Then the Man of God at once learned from his brother's destruction the loss of his own life. But since the spirit is willing, while the flesh is ever weak, trembling he withdrew his presence for a little from the city.

[4] he consults St. Waldebert; Remembering the reward, and desiring to be endowed with martyrdom, he returned to his own city: and at once sent secretly to Waldebert, the man of God, who at Luxeuil ^m held the fatherly headship with his brethren, and asked him to come to him with a few servants most speedily. The man of God, therefore, understanding that under such a beseeching there lay such a purpose, without delay betook himself to the walls of the city of Lyons. And when they had greeted one another with tears, and had given each other pious kisses with weeping, they withdrew apart, further off, on account of the grief of the others: and there the elder, refreshing him with worthy exhortation, and congratulating him on the meeting brought about by his speed, penance being received, they persevered the whole day and night in watchings and prayers. And since a command had already been delivered to three commanders that they should present the blessed pontiff Annemundus to the prince under faithful custody, or, if he refused, should leave him slain on the spot, they arrive with all speed at Lyons.

[5] ordered to be led to the king, he prepares himself for death; And when they were hastening to the aforesaid city to fulfil what had been commanded, the Servant of God, dreading the contest, wished to hold back: but turning to the man of God, he said: "It is better for me to endure martyrdom for a wicked charge than to leave a bad example to others." Standing therefore in the city committed to him, he so wore himself down in almsgiving, in fastings, in vigils, in unceasing prayer with his clergy, that whatever he had lately admitted through ignorance he might, weeping, blot out here by penance. And when the city had been surrounded with cohorts for his death, fires were burning everywhere at the crossways, and they were laying waste all things in the towns. But when such things had been announced to the Servant of God, at once celebrating the divine Mysteries and, as with the supplication of a dying man, commending his soul and spirit to the Most High, after receiving the Communion he said to the bystanders: "I beseech you, my brethren, and I humbly entreat all the citizens, that if in anything I have been ungracious to you, or have taken anything by violence, you would not take it ill; but forgive it peaceably."

[6] But they answered with one accord, saying: "Never (good Shepherd) hast thou been ungracious to us, nor hast thou seized anything from us by force; but from the least to the greatest we reckon ourselves to have been relieved and enriched by thy benefits. Do thou pardon us our misdeeds, that whatever we have done against thee through sloth, aided by thy prayers, we may be able to amend." Then the holy Pontiff, lifting his eyes to heaven, said: "Lord God almighty, who didst require the blood of the slain Abel; who didst sacrifice thy Son for us all, and didst show us to follow the rule of the passion whither he himself had gone before, and didst teach us to pray for those who oppose us: who didst swiftly hear blessed Stephen thy protomartyr, when, on a false charge laid against him, he was crushed by the blows of stones, praying for his enemies and commending his spirit to thee; I beseech thee that thou suffer me not to be cheated of this way of salvation, but permit me to exult in the rest of those who have been persecuted and have suffered in vain. And lay not this sin to their charge, who have forgotten the covenant of God, who in the Holy of Holies have violated their oath. Thou knowest, almighty God, my thought, and the secrets of my heart are not hidden from thee, whether there has been in me any deceit, or whether I have wished to destroy the prince, whom I have resolved to have as my earthly lord before myself: because thou wilt render to each according to his works, and to him who shall not have turned aside from thy commandments thou wilt repay everlasting goods in the world to come, and wilt grant more abundant things than thou hast promised."

[7] And the prayer being finished, arming himself with the sign of the Cross, and bidding all farewell, he said: he bids his own farewell, "My peace I give you, and I shall keep the kiss of your charity unto eternity. Be not troubled at all at the taking away of my presence; for I hasten to commend you to Christ. For it is expedient that I alone should perish, and it is better than that Christ should require at my hand the unspeakable slaughter of so many men." Leaving therefore the very great crowd of people which followed, thronged about by chosen companions in choirs of psalm-singers and by the poor chanting the acclamations Kyrie eleison and alleluia, he came at length into the presence of the governor, and, having greeted all, said: "Peace be to you. In unwonted fashion I behold you standing here with your company. If you have come only for your own salvation, the church, at my invitation and with me going before, will receive you today as peaceable sons. But if you wish to exercise any vengeance upon me, I neither delay my presence, nor contend in words against your disposal."

[8] Then the prefect said: "Under a semblance of sweetness, as though with a contrite and humbled heart, you come forward to us — you who are known neither as an innocent servant of God nor as a friend of the king." To whom the Pontiff answered: "I had not thought to hear this speech from your mouth today, nor to know a public asserter of the charge of treason brought against me: but him whom his conscience does not stain, another's words do not defile. There has not grown in me the madness of so great savagery that I should envy the glory of him from whose font I took my father's surname, and of whose Christian profession I stand as witness, and that I should try secretly to invite a foreign nation." The asserter said: "It is not ours to contend with you here about these things or others, nor to plead about your superstitious words: since in this city you do not sit in a priestly order, but stand as it were a tax-gatherer. Therefore it is commanded that you be presented together with us to the king's sight. And be sure that, if you delay, we shall leave you slain in this place."

[9] by whom, Waldebert being dismissed, Then the Pontiff said: "As you have spoken, I shall go undaunted": and being taken by his enemies, with cheerful face and brave speech he asked of the elders two priests, and as many deacons and clerks, in his company. On another day, when he had come to the city of Mâcon, ⁿ the Man of God, wishing to visit the thresholds of the Saints with prayer, and to render due greeting to Agano, ^o the prelate of that city, was forbidden by the governor and his companions. But the prefect, seeing that Waldebert the abbot, beloved of God, was unceasingly consoling him in Christ, and diligently guarding him from the peril of his enemies, the commanders addressed him with this speech: "It is harmful to us and a loss to our journey if you wish to accompany the Bishop: since it has been commanded us that he be led to be produced, kept by our care apart from the converse of friends and the fellowship of priests." But he said: "My travelling in no way hinders or offends you: but I see that with a bent mind you are seeking a place of perdition." And they all together said: "Upon us here and hereafter be this stroke which you dread; unless we present him to the prince's sight, as you leave him today: only let it be that you betake yourself by some other path on which you wish to go forward."

[10] he is brought to the territory of Chalon; Therefore, as the company of the people hastened into the territory of Chalon, [p] they there pitched their tents not far from an estate of his church. Then a certain aged priest of the neighbourhood came in haste, for the sake of exhorting him, into the tent in which the Man of God was lying, and said: "My lord, do not judge these things which now befall you to be against you, but reckon them profitable for the salvation of the soul. So endure exile gladly; so wisely receive martyrdom; like those who of old went before you in such a merit, and purchased with a like gift the rest of eternity. I ask, therefore, that of my scanty food you would deign to accept some little for charity's sake, and to refresh a body worn down with fastings." And he, gladly bearing the Servant of God's request, the office being doubled after the custom, took with him the meal that was offered. And so, the refreshment and the spiritual conversation being ended, after a little, bidding him farewell with tears, he returned to his own hut: and the space of the day being completed, the neighbouring night came on: in which the most blessed man of God Annemundus, having performed the singing of the psalmody, wearied from the journey, took to his couch and gave himself to sleep.

[11] by night he is secretly killed: At that time it came about that in the mid-silence of the night he was secretly slain with the sword by two men suborned, while all there slept. [q] And when his happy soul had been loosed from the body, at once a fiery redness like the bow of the covenant appeared, bending over the camp in the sight of the watchmen: and thus many learned by that sign that a Just man had been unjustly destroyed: and his clerks, waking at once and asking the Bishop to sing the morning praises, had not yet known him to be dead, but thought that he was sunk in sleep: and approaching the couch, when the face was uncovered, they saw him all drenched in blood and said to one another: "We have carelessly lost,

him whom we did not guard with diligent care." At once it was announced to the chief men of the army: who, coming at daybreak, found the body lifeless, and, mindful of the promise which they had lately made to father Waldebert, returned in sadness. [r]

[12] Martyrdom having thus been endured, he was carried down to the stern by the few companions whom he had brought with him, and returned by the conveyance of the Saône to the city of Lyons. But on the next day, when evening had come, he put in at the island which is called Barbara, [s] where the ranks of watching monks were awaiting him: whom, washed as is fitting, and worthily wrapped, they laid upon a bier, and again placed on the conveyance to be carried to the city. In the morning the poor body was received by the clergy and people with the greatest honour, all singing and saying: "Glory to thee, O Lord: we render thee thanks, because him whom we thought exiled, or at least dead, we receive full of virtues." And so, the office being performed after the custom, they took the blessed little body from the bier and entombed it with worthy obsequies in the basilica of St. Peter the apostle (where he himself had lately appointed that the poor should be fed out of his own provisions). [t]

[13] For the rest, I think it must not be passed over how great virtues the Lord deigned to work through him. Many miracles are wrought at his tomb; The vessel, therefore, which was placed before his tomb with oil kindled in it, is never diminished, but is more often overflowing, and is reported to shine unfailingly. A certain blind man, who for nearly three lustres had lost his sight, having often prostrated himself at the tomb of this Martyr, at length received there the light of his former vision. Again to a certain paralytic, when he faithfully implored there, his former gait was restored. Moreover whoever had anything of the staff or pastoral rod which he carried in his hand, or even of the bed on which he was struck by the swordsman as he slept, and had placed it upon aching limbs, at once received the health he desired. If anyone seized by a demon, or beset by some other disease, deigned to visit the thresholds of the basilica for love of the glorious martyr Annemundus, he departed forthwith set free.

[14] But when the famous report of this martyr Annemundus had filled almost the whole world, to a man blind from birth it happened that a certain German, blind from birth, dreamed that if he wished to receive the light of his eyes he should go to the city of Lyons, and there visit in the church of blessed Peter the apostle the tomb of St. Annemundus the martyr. Therefore setting out on his journey to the first city, at length, wearied by the long toil of the journey, he came to Lyons: and entering the walls of the city, he often said: "Annemundus, soldier of Christ, help me." And when he had come to the church of St. Peter, where the holy Martyr's body lay, he was honourably and mercifully received by the nuns serving God there. And when no trace of sight appeared in him (for the sockets of his eyes were levelled like the rest of his face), they said to him in compassion: "Relying on what help, brother, hast thou wearied thyself so long?" "That," he said, "the blessed martyr Annemundus, whom the Lord deigned to show me in a vision, may succour me, blind from birth. I pray, therefore, that you present me to him."

[15] And when they had done this, first a Mass was celebrated by the priest festively and devoutly. sight is granted. And so, when the deacon was already beginning to read the Gospel, the blind man's wife nudged his side as he lay prostrate on the ground, that he should rise and stand to hear the Gospel. But when he refused, and gave no answer after his wonted manner, his wife turned to sighs and unwonted groans. And not long after, he who had lain blind upon the ground, rising up, with opened eyes looking upon the sky, praised God, who by the merits of his martyr Annemundus had restored his sight to him. Do you, spouses of Christ (I pray), weigh with attentive mind the miracle set before you: and to him who restored sight to the human race pour forth prayers, that he may deign to expel the darkness of unbelief from our breasts; and may your bodies be kept so bright that Christ your spouse may flow into you from heaven, and so fortify you in this contest that, striving lawfully, we may deserve to receive the crown of everlasting gladness — the Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns through the endless ages of ages.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Cabilo, Cabillonum and Cabilonum, commonly Chalon-sur-Saône, is a city in the duchy of Burgundy; about it see the Preliminary Commentary, num. 73.

q. About the manner and kind of the murder we have discoursed in the same place, num. 74 and following.

r. More likely they feigned sadness, and dismissed St. Waldebert beforehand, because they did not dare to carry out the crime they had conceived in the presence of a man of the highest authority with queen Bathildis.

s. About that island, with its once notable monastery in the middle, situated in the Saône a little above Lyons, we have treated at greater length in this very volume at the day 25 September, in the Preliminary Commentary to the Acts of St. Lupus, bishop of Lyons.

t. See what has been said about the place of burial in the Commentary, §6.

TRANSLATION AND MIRACLES

From the printed Office.

Annemundus, otherwise Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons, martyr, in the territory of Chalon in Gaul. (S.)

A. By an Anonymous Writer.

The Saint's body is carried down to Lyons, By what ways God, the Best and Greatest, showed the innocence of the blessed father Annemundus, and the malice of those who envied him, it is not permitted to pass over in silence. But how great virtues he deigned to work through him, and what miracles to show in his holy body, to the confusion of those who hated him and the instruction of all the faithful, it is fitting to narrate at least a few out of many. And so, the holy Father's martyrdom having been narrated, let us see whither the holy body came: for, placed in a small boat on the Saône ^a without pilot or any steersman whatever, it was directed to Lyons. ^b A wondrous thing! By whatever part it passed, all the bells which were in those places sounded without anyone ringing them, and two silver candlesticks, sent down from above by divine power, with candles shining upon them, clung continually to the holy body in the boat. ^c Which was received by the clergy and citizens of Lyons with the greatest weeping, mingled nevertheless with joy; because him whom they had thought exiled, they received dead.

[2] And when the clerks of the various churches of Lyons had come in procession, and given to the nuns of St. Peter to be buried and each wished to claim so great a treasure for himself alone and to carry it to his own church, it could in no way be moved from the place: ^d at which thing all greatly marvelled, and suspected that the cause of it was that the procession of the nuns of the monastery of St. Peter was not yet present: for in it were the two sisters of blessed Annemundus dedicated to God: ^e who, being summoned, came thither devoutly; and when the said two sisters had arrived, they knew that it was the body of their Brother, and bitterly wept for him whom they had inwardly loved: then the holy body, moved by divine power, drew near to them; making it clear enough that he wished to be buried with them, and that their church ought to be enriched with so great a treasure. And when they were setting down the blessed Martyr at the tomb with mournful chanting, laying him down a little at a time here and there, a certain sick man, tossing himself frequently beneath the bier, departed safe from his affliction by his intervention. Their joy being therefore doubled, those who had come in his train began to cry out with one accord: "We give thee thanks, Jesus Christ, because him whom his enemies thought deservedly killed, we now receive full of virtues."

[3] And so, the funeral obsequies having been solemnly and with the greatest honour performed by all the ecclesiastical men and religious persons who had assembled, it is handed over; where presently to a blind man sight and the holy body of the blessed Martyr having been reverently entombed in the said church of St. Peter, there was present in the great multitude of people a certain blind man, who, trusting in God's mercy and the merits of blessed Annemundus, lay humbly prostrate upon the tomb. Where, devoutly adoring God, and unweariedly beseeching that by the merits and intercessions of blessed Annemundus the use of his eyes be restored to him, without delay he received his sight with such keenness as though he had never suffered any disease of the eyes. Then, not ungrateful for so great a benefit, with great thanksgiving and jubilation he began to run through the whole city, and publicly proclaimed to all the miracle which had been wrought in him, to the praise and honour of God and of the blessed martyr Annemundus.

[4] is restored, and to others thereafter After this, he who had been blind, lest he should be ungrateful for

so great a benefit of God, offered two lamps, which he appointed to shine perpetually with the liquor of oil in honour of the blessed Martyr: where God's munificence may above all be weighed, since the said lamps shone for the revolution of one year without any diminution of the oil (although it was frequently poured in), ^f in witness of how blessed Annemundus had been a lamp set not under a bushel but upon a candlestick. Nor is it less to be wondered at that all who were anointed with that same oil, by whatever infirmity they were held, were suddenly healed. There was besides a certain paralytic, who, faithfully imploring help beside the tomb of blessed Annemundus, perfectly received back his former gait. In witness of which thing he carried back upon his shoulders with great exultation the staves by which he had before been supported, and which he had used for feet when he came.

[5] several benefits are bestowed: Finally, so many and so great miracles were wrought by the merits of the most blessed Father at his tomb, at the touch of the staff which he had carried in his hand, at the kissing of the garments or of any other things whatever which the Blessed one had worn or used, that it is impossible not only to narrate them but even to comprehend them in the mind. And nevertheless his virtues and merits were so published abroad by miracles that his fame flew out through the whole world. Now it must be confessed that, when the fame of the miracles of the most renowned martyr and excellent pontiff Annemundus had run through almost all the regions of the world, ^g a certain German, blind from birth, dreamed that if he wished to use the sight of his eyes he should go to the thresholds of the monastery of Lyons founded under the title of the prince of the Apostles: where the buried body of the most renowned martyr Annemundus is venerated.

[6] another man blind from birth, admonished When he was making his way, seeking France, being ignorant of the aforesaid city, he went to Lyons Clavatum, ^h and, setting forth the cause of his journey, learned the way by which he might come to Lyons Psistoforum; ⁱ taking with him his wife as the solace of the road, and an only son. Entering therefore the aforesaid city, he resounded with frequent voice: "Annemundus, soldier of Christ, help me": and when he had come to the famous monastery of holy Peter, the nuns, serving God there, received him with the highest charity. And when no trace of sight appeared in him — for the place of his eyes was smooth, ^k like the rest of his face — the said nuns said to him in compassion: "Relying on what help, brother, and for what cause hast thou come hither from parts so remote? What end hast thou set thyself for so great a labour?"

[7] to go to his tomb, is likewise endowed with sight. Answering them, he said: "That the martyr of Christ Annemundus himself may succour me, blind from birth; as the Lord deigned to show me in a dream. Do you therefore, I pray, present me a sinner to the holy Martyr": and when they had done this, with a priest going before, Mass was begun with the highest gladness. And so, when the deacon was beginning to read the Gospel, the blind man's wife nudged his side, that he who lay prostrate should rise and stand to hear the holy Gospel, as is the custom. But when he resisted, and did not give ear after his wonted manner, she uttered unheard-of sighs and unwonted groans, in the hearing of all. And not long after, he who had lain blind, now rising, looking up to heaven with his eyes, praised the Lord, who by the intercessions of the martyr Annemundus had opened them and added sight to him. ^l

ANNOTATIONS.