Exuperius

ON ST. EXUPERIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,

AT TOULOUSE IN GAUL.

After 410.

A HISTORICAL COLLECTION.

Exuperius, Bishop and Conf., at Toulouse in Gaul. (S.)

BY J. S.

§ I. The Saint's memory in the Martyrologies and his cult: some general elogia: the Acts are not to be published.

[ ] The first of the martyrologists who announced the memory of St. Exuperius at this day The Saint's memory in the Martyrologies and his cult on 28 September; seems to have been Usuard, as our Sollerius observed in his Usuard at this day. Now Usuard used these words: At Toulouse, of St. Exuperius, bishop and confessor, which blessed man, how sparing he was to himself and how bountiful to others, holy Jerome set out in a memorable account. He will have learned the deeds from Jerome, as the words given suggest; but the cult he could learn from the people of Toulouse or from their Offices: for neither is it likely that he was announced merely on account of the elogia given him while he lived by Jerome, since he had been omitted in all the preceding Martyrologies, but on account of the cult which he enjoyed at Toulouse while Usuard was writing, as the ninth century grew old. The words of Usuard the Author of the manuscript Florarium Sanctorum also adopted at this day: and in almost the same words he is celebrated in the Hagiology which Labbe published, and the more recent martyrologists generally celebrate St. Exuperius today, as does the Roman Martyrology, repeating the words of Usuard. But there is no need to recite those elogia of the more recent writers, since they bring nothing new. That the birthday of St. Exuperius is celebrated on this day at Toulouse, Catel, often to be cited, and several others who have treated of the Saint, assert.

[2] Yet on other days too the memory of St. Exuperius is read as entered in the Fasti. mention likewise on 8 April, and on 14 June the Translation celebrated: At the VIII of April it is found in the Usuardine codices of Centula and the Greater Antwerp one, as also in Greven and other more recent writers. Of these the following was noted in the Prætermissi at the VIII of April: St. Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, sparing to himself and kindly to the needy, is mentioned in the manuscript Martyrologies of Centula, of St. Lambert and St. Laurence of Liège, and various others: likewise by Maurolico, Canisius, Ferrari and others. From these arises a suspicion of some festivity celebrated on that day; but what it was I do not find. For that the Translation of St. Exuperius is celebrated on the XIV day of June, Catel testifies. And Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology at the XIV of June has it thus: At Toulouse, the finding of the body of St. Exuperius, bishop and confessor, whose day of deposition is celebrated on the XXVIII of September. In the Supplement at the same day he brings forward this: At Toulouse, the Translation of St. Exuperius the bishop, the perpetual guardian of that city, when his sacred body was brought from the lowly place of Blagnac, two miles distant from the city, into the city, and laid with many others at St. Saturninus's. By whose prayers the city of Toulouse rejoices that it has many times been kept safe from the snares of the enemies of the faith and of the fatherland, and professes it by yearly vows, published and paid by public authority. Thus far Saussay.

[3] The same writer, at the XXVIII of September, where he mentions many things about the Saint's deeds, his sacred remains are kept at Toulouse: but things partly to be corrected, subjoins this about the relics: He rests in the basilica of St. Saturninus in a silver reliquary, placed above the altar of the most holy Mother of God which is called of Consolation. But his most sacred head, divided from the body, is kept laid up in a silver bier, enclosed in a special shrine, together with a glass chalice in which he used to offer the Blood of the Lord, and other relics of that same blessed Pontiff: water blessed by the touch of which, and drunk with faith, imparts refreshment and healing to those consumed by the heat of fevers. Nicolas Bertrand, in the Deeds of the Toulousans, which were printed in the year 1515, writes thus about the state of the body, fol. 10: Moreover the body of the most holy Exuperius is held and venerated in the oft-mentioned church of St. Saturninus, and is seen raised up in a silver casket: and it is wont to be kept above the altar which adjoins the crypt of St. Saturninus. But now, for some little time past, it is kept in a chapel (so to speak) of its own. And with how many miracles it has shone even to this present day, many witnesses have gone before and stand forth most abundant: whom we too have found to have been healed of various sicknesses with which they were afflicted, by the imploring of St. Exuperius: and we came as eye-witnesses to it. For those burning with a grievous fever, as with fire, hastened to the venerable relics of Exuperius, and asked that wine or water should be given them with which some part of them had been washed. Nor did they return home thence with a vain faith, but sound. Thus the said Bertrand, worthy of credit at least in those things which he says he saw; even though he does not deserve much credit about deeds long past, as we shall see.

[4] The Saint is honoured in other places also. Not only at Toulouse, but in other places too, St. Exuperius is honoured, as is gathered from Catel, who

treats of St. Exuperius at great length in his Records of the History of Occitania, written in French, book 5, page 827 and following. For at page 829 he testifies that in the village of Blagnac, where St. Exuperius is believed to have died, there stands a church dedicated to the Saint, and that he is honoured there with great devotion. He mentions another church of St. Exuperius also in the place of his birth, as they will have it, in the diocese of Comminges near the Pyrenean mountains. Bertrand calls it Aure, agreeing about both churches, and adding: Various miracles are done, and many are healed of divers sicknesses. Whence devotion to the Saint has grown from day to day, both at Aure and at Blagnac. He nevertheless reports no miracles; but he says that the Saint's arm, adorned with a silver covering, was at Blagnac, and subjoins the finding and the translation of the body. But that account deserves little credit, as will presently be said of the whole Life written by Bertrand. Meanwhile let these things said about the cult of St. Exuperius suffice.

[5] Elogia given the Saint by contemporaries. That St. Exuperius was a bishop of remarkable sanctity and learning is abundantly gathered from the various elogia, to be recited below in order, with which St. Jerome adorned him while he lived. St. Paulinus agrees, who numbered St. Exuperius among the chief bishops of Gaul of his time, and named him first among the chief, writing thus, in St. Gregory of Tours, book 2 of the History, chap. 13: For if you should see these priests worthy of the Lord — Exuperius of Toulouse, or Simplicius of Vienne, or Amandus of Bordeaux, or Diogenianus of Albi, or Dynamius of Angoulême, or Venerandus of Clermont, or now Pegasius of Périgueux — however the evils of the age may stand, you will assuredly see them most worthy guardians of all sanctity and faith and religion. In the Acts of St. Saturninus, whose body, as we shall see, he translated, he is called a Man, without wrong to any of his predecessors, without envy of any of those who at that time seemed to rule the churches, not only second to none, but even to be compared for the merits of his virtues with the blessed martyr himself (Saturninus). Illustrious is this elogium, especially if we consider that many bishops distinguished for sanctity, and among them St. Augustine, were contemporaries of St. Exuperius.

[6] No one of the ancients seems to have written Acts of St. Exuperius. A Life written by Bernard Gui, but it is not to be published: The first who took pains to gather them from the ancients seems to have been Bernard Gui, of the Order of Preachers, bishop of Lodève, who flourished at the end of the thirteenth century and in the fourteenth. He composed a Life of St. Exuperius, as Échard asserts in the Library of the Preachers, tom. 1, page 578, where he enumerates very many writings of the said Bernard. That Life is commemorated also by Nicolas Bertrand, who saw it in manuscript at Toulouse. It was sent in the year 1642 to our Predecessors by Fr. Johann Scholtz from a Prague manuscript, with this title prefixed: The Life of St. Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, by Bernard Gui. I should give this Life, since we have no better, were it not that all those things which the author rightly gathered about St. Exuperius from St. Jerome and other ancients can easily be drawn from the same sources and arranged in a better order. What further hinders me from communicating the whole of Bernard's Lucubration to the reader is its by no means necessary prolixity, since the author discourses much longer on a single deed of St. Exuperius, related by St. Jerome, than on all the Saint's other doings. Moreover, for want of the critical and chronological art, he asserted some fabulous things, and others contrary to right chronology. Wherefore I do not judge that I should be doing anything worth the pains if I published this Life. Out of it, nevertheless, I shall produce in this Collection everything that shall seem to further our purpose.

[7] Nicolas Bertrand, an advocate in the parliament of Toulouse, composed at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Deeds of the Toulousans, by Nicolas Bertrand and in them, from fol. 6, the Life of St. Exuperius, alleging his reasons in the Preface and recounting after a fashion the documents which he followed. First he says that, besides the Letters of St. Jerome, he found very few things about the Saint's deeds, and found nothing in the Historians beyond a slight elogium in Peter de Natalibus. But what he did in so great a poverty of documents, and what he himself performed, he sets out in these words: And so, since I desired to paint his Life, while other proofs failed, I judged that I must have recourse to the sayings of the country people, so far as they were consonant with reason, and to the likely ancient carvings of marble stones. And this counsel of his he approves out of Bartolus and out of the Apostle; and presently he subjoins: Striving therefore to write the most holy life and excellent deeds of the excellent Exuperius, I have excerpted, after the manner of the resourceful bee, out of the Letters of St. Jerome and ancient Writings adorned with various kinds of expression and idiom, and also out of carvings and the more likely sayings of our elders — which in that matter seemed to me the stronger course — and have so gathered them into one, that most men may easily judge that the Life of the most holy Exuperius, before, I say, unpolished and scattered piecemeal, nay wholly hidden and almost entirely perished, is now, as we suppose, seriously woven together, clear and entire. But however much Bertrand may flatter himself, the studious reader will easily understand that neither the authority of Bartolus nor that of St. Paul is rightly alleged for consulting country folk about the deeds of a Saint dead almost eleven centuries; nor are those things to be admitted as true which that advocate first published.

[8] the preceding one being more fabulous. The very facts, or rather the little fables, which Bertrand everywhere mixed with true facts, are apt to take away from him all authority in those things which he seems to have been the first to relate. Such are not a few in the Deeds reported by him about St. Exuperius. If we believe the said advocate, he laid low the Goths besieging Toulouse by the mere sprinkling of holy water. For those whom it touched fell at once from the walls in heaps, lifeless and dead: but those at a distance, whom the water could not touch, he consumed with his lynx-like eyes. Several trifles of this kind Bertrand inserted into his Life. Therefore not without reason does Catel say of him in the History of Occitania, book 2, page 265: A diligent and inquisitive man, if only he had been willing to separate the true from the fabulous, and had not too easily believed without examination whatever he found written. Wherefore not only am I unwilling to reprint that Life; but there is no need even to refute the several things which Bertrand asserted, since it is clearer than light that he knew nothing about the deeds of St. Exuperius beyond what we can ourselves draw from the ancients, and which he befouled with the most wretched little fables.

§ II. The Saint's native place unknown; unless perhaps he was of Bordeaux: it is asked whether he is the same as certain others of the same name.

[ ] St. Exuperius's native place is unknown: Of the family, native place and youth of St. Exuperius nothing is said that is certain or even sufficiently probable. For what Catel says about the place of his birth in the diocese of Comminges, in the town of Aure, seems to have no other author than Bertrand, who begins the Saint's Life thus: That most holy pontiff of Toulouse, Exuperius, is reported to have drawn his origin from a father and mother who were country folk of the vale of Aure, or of its borders. But these things Bertrand will have learned, I suppose, from the country people whom he consulted, as also the rest that he brings forward in the same place about his first upbringing: and therefore they scarcely deserve more credit than very many other little fables of that advocate. Bernard Gui says at the end of the Life: Neither is the place of his birth or origin described in the same (ancient writers). Common report, however, hands down that he was of the territory of Morval. This place I do not find, nor does it please me to discourse much about either place, since popular traditions of that kind commonly arise without lawful ground and deserve no credit. Let it therefore suffice to have said briefly that the birthplace of St. Exuperius is unknown to me; and that it is not probably said that he was born of country parents, which Catel judged not even worth refuting or reporting. We could nevertheless believe him a man of Bordeaux, if it were established that he is the same as Exuperius the presbyter of Bordeaux, of whom I shall treat.

[10] Baronius makes Exuperius the rhetorician the same as today's Saint: Baronius, in his Annotations on the Martyrology at this day, brings forward another opinion, into which by his authority he has drawn many. And if this is true, not a few things about the deeds of St. Exuperius before his episcopate have become known. To this Exuperius, he says, before he was bishop, while he was professing among the famous orators, there is extant an Epigram of Ausonius the Gaul, who testifies that after the prefecture of the Spains he retired to the haven of a more tranquil life. Nor does what Joseph Scaliger says please us, that Exuperius the rhetorician is different from Exuperius the bishop on account of the different faculties of the two; as though he who was a bishop could not have been a rhetorician, or he who was once a rhetorician could not be made a bishop. The place, the time and the pursuits of his life easily persuade that he was one and the same. But this too the more strongly: for since Ausonius in the same Epigram testifies at the end that Exuperius the rhetorician was of Bordeaux by birth; and since it is established from the XX Letter of St. Paulinus to Amandus bishop of Bordeaux that Exuperius was then a presbyter of Bordeaux; we not without reason judge that he is to be held one and the same: whom nevertheless we suppose not yet to have been in the ranks of the clergy in these times of Ausonius. This opinion Baronius again declared in the Annals at the year 405. On account of this judgment of Baronius, Juan Tamayo de Salazar inserted St. Exuperius into the Spanish Martyrology at this day, namely because Exuperius the rhetorician was afterwards a governor in Spain.

[11] But Catel, in the Records of the History of Occitania, sufficiently proves but that opinion is not probable: that that opinion of Baronius is improbable, and several others have followed Catel, and by name Pagi at the year 405, and Tillemont, tom. 10, Note 1 on St. Exuperius. The first reason for distinguishing them is drawn from the time: for Exuperius the rhetorician flourished almost half a century before St. Exuperius, since he taught the sons of Dalmatius, the brother of Constantine the Great, Hannibalianus and Dalmatius, who afterwards obtained the name of Caesar, as the said Epigram has it. Now those princes, as Pagi and Tillemont observe, were made in the year 335, the one Caesar, the other king of Pontus, and gave Exuperius some prefecture in Spain. And so, since he taught the said princes at Narbonne before the year 335, it does not become likely that that Exuperius survived to the end of the fourth century, whereas St. Exuperius was still among the living in the year 411, as we shall see. Moreover Ausonius wrote the Epigram after the death of Exuperius, whom he shows to have died very rich at Cahors. The words, to which Baronius did not attend, I subjoin:

Departing, thou didst end thy peaceful ways and the tranquil times of thy life, very rich, in the seat of Cahors.

But from what we are about to say of St. Exuperius, it again does not become likely that he died very rich. Still less likely does it become that Ausonius the poet lived after St. Exuperius, as Catel well notes. For in the year 379 Ausonius obtained the consulship, and in the same year delivered the Thanksgiving in the Oration printed among his Works. And in this he says: But I am now a consul and an old man. Wherefore, since in the year 379 he was an old man, it is not credible that Ausonius lived after the year 411, and even then composed poems, especially since it can be shown by no

indication that he reached the end of the fourth century. Lastly, Ausonius would not have omitted the bishopric of Toulouse, if he had been writing about St. Exuperius. It seems therefore certain and undoubted that Exuperius the rhetorician is other than St. Exuperius.

[12] Further, as regards Exuperius the presbyter of Bordeaux, nor is Exuperius the rhetorician the same as the presbyter of Bordeaux. whom Baronius also made the same as the two just now distinguished, the time of this presbyter agrees excellently with the time of St. Exuperius's episcopate; but certainly neither ought this presbyter to be confounded with Exuperius the rhetorician. That rhetorician was of Bordeaux by birth; but he was never a presbyter there, as is sufficiently gathered from the said Epigram of Ausonius, in which the chief offices of Exuperius the rhetorician are reported, and his various dwellings. He had been born at Bordeaux, had taught at Toulouse, and, driven thence, had instructed the sons of Dalmatius at Narbonne, and at last had obtained a prefecture in Spain. Afterwards he had led and ended a tranquil life at Cahors. And having reported these things, he subjoins two verses about the dead man, by which Baronius was likely deceived into believing that Ausonius wrote of one still living. For they can indeed be so understood, if they are considered by themselves and not compared with other places of Ausonius.

But the rights of thy fatherland call thee, and thy parents' origin, that thou mayest render again to Bordeaux a name from a rhetorician.

The poet suggests nothing by those words except that Exuperius is to be numbered among the learned men of Bordeaux, even though he had passed and ended the greatest part of his life in other cities; and that thus the dead man's fame as a rhetorician is restored to the people of Bordeaux. He was not therefore, after his other offices, a presbyter of Bordeaux; but perhaps had died thirty or forty years, or even more, before St. Paulinus made mention of Exuperius the presbyter.

[13] But it is likely that the presbyter of Bordeaux But the age of Exuperius the presbyter, as I have already said, agrees excellently with the age of St. Exuperius of Toulouse. For the Letter of St. Paulinus to Amandus, afterwards bishop of Bordeaux, is believed to have been written in the year 397. It is in the latest Verona edition the twelfth (elsewhere the 21st), and towards the end it runs thus: See to it also with the holy presbyter, our brother Exuperius, that he (Sanemarius, a slave to whom Paulinus had given liberty) may receive in the cottage of the church a little plot of land whereby to procure his living. Not many years after this Letter was written St. Exuperius was certainly bishop, and between Bordeaux and Toulouse there is no such distance that a presbyter of Bordeaux could not be called to the bishopric of Toulouse. Place and time, therefore, favour Baronius's opinion. To increase the likelihood and probability of this opinion there comes in the fact that from this passage it becomes certain that that Exuperius, presbyter of Bordeaux, was well known to St. Paulinus. For since in the words given at num. 5 he celebrates St. Exuperius among the chief bishops of Gaul, as he does St. Amandus, we cannot doubt that St. Paulinus knew St. Exuperius well, as he knew Exuperius the presbyter; and so it becomes most likely that the same man was praised by him, first as a presbyter, then as bishop of Toulouse. Most likely, I say, it becomes that Exuperius of Bordeaux was afterwards raised to the bishopric of Toulouse. I would not, however, venture to hand down that conjecture as historical truth sufficiently ascertained, because a certain Exuperius is also mentioned by St. Jerome in his 54th Letter (elsewhere the 10th) to Furia, of whom the same conjecture is formed.

[14] and the instructor of Furia mentioned by Jerome, Of Exuperius in the said Letter, written about 394, to Furia, a young widow, he speaks thus: Thou hast the holy Exuperius, of approved age and faith, to instruct thee frequently by his admonitions. Furia was at Rome when St. Jerome wrote this, as he clearly intimates in two places. And from this Baronius, at the year 394, believed that Exuperius was at that time living at Rome; and Tillemont, seizing on this, tom. 10, Note 1 on St. Exuperius, says that it can hardly be believed that the same Exuperius lived at Rome in the year 394, was a presbyter of Bordeaux in the year 397, and after a few years bishop of Toulouse. That change of places, if it be true, has indeed at first sight something contrary to likelihood, but the words alleged certainly do not prove that Exuperius was then at Rome; and therefore I do not find what can here be certainly affirmed. Furia could have Exuperius as a friend, instructor and master, even if he had been a presbyter of Bordeaux and had dwelt at Bordeaux, and could be frequently instructed by his admonitions through letters; since the commerce of letters between Rome and Bordeaux was not difficult. Exuperius could stay at Rome for a time, as Jerome stayed there for some years, either before he received the presbyterate, or even when already a presbyter, and then return to Bordeaux. About Exuperius living at Rome nothing has become known from elsewhere, so that it is likely either that he did not dwell at Rome, or not for long. If he did not dwell at Rome, or only for a very short time, nothing stands in the way of his being a presbyter at Bordeaux in the year 397 and afterwards bishop of Toulouse.

[15] Wherefore no argument is brought forward by which we are compelled to say is the same as St. Exuperius; yet this is not certain. that the instructor of Furia is one Exuperius, the presbyter of Bordeaux another, and St. Exuperius of Toulouse another. I confess likewise that neither is any document found by which it can be proved that either the instructor of Furia or Exuperius of Bordeaux was afterwards promoted to the episcopate. I suspect nevertheless that the opinion of Baronius, however uncertain it be, and though it ought not to be held for certain, is true, as it has much likelihood if it be rightly weighed. The age of all is the same, if there were several; all were of approved virtue, if there were two or three distinct men. For Paulinus calls the man of Bordeaux a holy presbyter, and afterwards praises the man of Toulouse wonderfully. And Jerome sufficiently declared how much he esteemed the instructor of Furia, when he wished this most noble young widow to be instructed by his admonitions. And so, if they are all distinguished, there were three Exuperii at once illustrious for virtues. But now, if the three are different, the instructor of Furia has become known by one place of Jerome only, and likewise the man of Bordeaux by one place of Paulinus. But if it is one and the same St. Exuperius everywhere — first the instructor of Furia by letter, or at Rome for some time, and already then a presbyter, or afterwards ordained presbyter at Bordeaux, and at last raised to the bishopric of Toulouse — we shall be able to wonder less that St. Exuperius is mentioned in various qualities and went to various cities, as Jerome, Paulinus, Rufinus and very many others did in that age, than we should wonder that there were three Exuperii at the same time excelling in virtue, and that two of them remained wholly obscure.

§ III. The deeds of St. Exuperius set out in chronological order from the beginning of his episcopate to his death.

[ ] St. Exuperius succeeded St. Silvius in the episcopate; Of the year in which St. Exuperius was promoted to the episcopate nothing is established: but it is ascertained that he was the successor of St. Silvius, of whom it was treated among us in tom. VII of May, page 438. But since nothing certain is had about the time of St. Silvius's death, the beginning of St. Exuperius's episcopate can likewise not be assigned. This we have, that Rhodanius, bishop of Toulouse, was banished into exile by the emperor Constantius in the year 356, and died in it, likely before the reign of Julian, who sent the exiled bishops back to their sees. St. Silvius could therefore have been promoted to the episcopate about the year 362, if there was no one between them, as none is interposed in the catalogues. But this notice can be of little profit, since again we do not know whether the episcopate of St. Silvius was long or short. Meanwhile from these things it is gathered that no attention is to be paid to the fragment of the Life of St. Servatius which Labbe recited, tom. 2 of the Councils, col. 617, where a certain council of Troyes is asserted, in which Exuperius bishop of Toulouse was chosen to go to Rome, and declined that charge, as is there read. For, since that council would have to be fixed before the middle of the fourth century, if that fragment of the Life deserves any credit, that Exuperius of Toulouse would have been another man, and would have sat almost half a century before St. Exuperius, and would have been the predecessor of Rhodanius. But that fragment is not to be made so much of that this should seem to be said.

[17] at an uncertain time before the year 405. If it were established that Exuperius the presbyter of Bordeaux is the same as St. Exuperius, the beginning of his episcopate would have to be fixed at the close of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth, between the years 397 and 404. But this is more likely than certain; and St. Exuperius, if he be another man, could have obtained the episcopate even twenty years and more earlier. The Letter of Jerome to Furia will in no way stand in the way, even if our Saint was designated in it. For if Jerome designated St. Exuperius, he did not deny that he was already then a bishop. And so I am compelled to leave the beginning of the episcopate uncertain, and only to observe that he was at least bishop from the year 404, since to his questions Pope St. Innocent replied by a Letter given in the year 405, on the XX day of February. And this reply sufficiently intimates that St. Exuperius wrote from the year 404 to consult the Pontiff about his doubts.

[18] The Saint completes the church of St. Saturninus, The first of St. Exuperius's deeds in the episcopate will have been, I suppose, the building of the basilica of St. Saturninus, begun by his predecessor St. Silvius. And of these things, in the Acts of St. Saturninus in Ruinart's Genuine Acts of the martyrs, page 132, after the earlier building of a modest shrine over the body of St. Saturninus, the first bishop and martyr of the Toulousans, has been related, the following are read to our purpose: As time went on thereafter, … holy Silvius, having obtained the bishopric of the above-named city, and preparing at great cost a fair and beautiful basilica to which the relics of the venerable martyr might be translated, departed from the world before the completion of the work he had begun. After whose death holy Exuperius, chosen to the high priesthood — a man, without wrong to any of his predecessors, without envy of any of those who at that time seemed to rule the churches, not only second to none, but even to be compared for the merits of his virtues with the blessed martyr himself — most urgently completed and happily dedicated the basilica which his predecessor had faithfully begun. This deed I do not hesitate to place first, because he will have undertaken to complete at once the basilica that had been begun. But the time of the building is no more certain than the very beginning of the episcopate.

[19] and translates the body into it. Of the body of St. Saturninus translated by Exuperius the author subjoins: Who, when he hesitated to translate thither the relics of the holy martyr — not from any unbelief of his own, but out of reverence for him — was admonished in sleep not to neglect unfaithfully what he had faithfully believed; that no wrong is done to the spirits either by the diminution of ashes or by the moving of limbs: because it was a manifest thing that this profited the martyrs unto honour, which had profited believers unto salvation. And being at once strengthened by such a vision, he offered a petition to the religious emperors, and without any delay obtained what he had so devoutly asked, that the relics of the holy man, translated to the basilica prepared with all zeal, should not be violated by rash daring, but rather honoured by the more ambitious observance of one who venerated him. What is here read about the faculty obtained from the emperors for translating the body,

agrees with the laws of the heathen Romans, by which it was forbidden to translate buried bodies without a just cause and without a faculty obtained either from the pontiffs or from the prince or from the governor of the province; and those laws flourished also under the first Christian emperors, lest the tombs should be violated. But afterwards the care of translating the bodies of the Saints seems to have been left to the bishops alone.

[20] In the year 404, as it drew to its close, so far as can be gathered from the date of the reply, He receives a reply to various questions of Pope Innocent St. Exuperius laid various questions before Pope St. Innocent; and the holy Pontiff answered each of them. Those heretics who wished to make that Letter of Innocent suspect of forgery have already been sufficiently refuted by others, and by our Cuper at the XXVIII of July in St. Innocent I, §4. The Letter is published in Labbe, tom. 2 of the Councils, col. [ ], in Coustant's Letters of the Roman Pontiffs, col. 789, and elsewhere. The address is: Innocent to Exuperius , bishop of Toulouse, greeting. The beginning: To thee who consultest me, dearest brother, as to what I thought about each proposed case, I have answered, according to the measure of my understanding, what seemed to me right — what either docile reason should persuade, or the authority of the reading show, or the preserved order of times demonstrate. And indeed thy charity, following the practice of prudent men, has preferred to refer to the Apostolic See what it ought to observe in doubtful matters, rather than by a presumptuous usurpation to hold to its own views on each point. For why should we think it more shameful to learn something than to be wholly ignorant? … I shall therefore set out the several points, and subjoin the answer.* What St. Exuperius had proposed is more rightly understood from the words of Innocent than from the titles less accurately prefixed to the Letter.

[21] Of the first question Innocent speaks thus: Thou hast proposed what ought to be observed concerning those who, being placed in the ministries of the diaconate or in the office of the presbyterate, have been shown by the children they begot to be, or to have been, incontinent. Of the second he has it thus: This too has been asked, what ought to be observed concerning those who, after baptism, being given up at all times to the pleasures of incontinence, at the last end of their life demand penance and reconciliation of communion at once. To the third he proceeds thus: Inquiry has also been made about those who after baptism have administered (judgments), and either have applied torments only, or have even pronounced a capital sentence. To the fourth: And this was desired to be known, why men who communicate do not live with adulterous wives, whereas on the other hand wives are seen to remain in the fellowship of adulterous husbands. The fifth question is expressed thus: This too thou hast wished to inquire, whether it be freely granted to those who draw up petitions (against wrongdoers), namely after the regeneration of baptism, to ask of the princes the death of anyone, or blood on account of a charge. The sixth: Thy charity has also inquired about those who, a repudiation intervening, have joined themselves to another marriage. The seventh at last — if Exuperius proposed this too, which is not clearly said — is put forward in these words: But which books are received in the canon, the short appended list shows. The Pontiff answered all these questions, as may be seen in the letter, and wove the canon of holy Scripture such as we have it today. This first I observe to our purpose, that from the doubts proposed it is gathered that St. Exuperius was wonderfully solicitous to teach his flock rightly, and to this end wished to be taught by the Apostolic See.

[22] Moreover it may be observed that St. Exuperius's first question, about incontinent presbyters and deacons, pertains to those who were either infected with the heresy of Vigilantius, or at least were defended by Vigilantius. Hence the learned Benedictines Claude de Vic and Joseph Vaissete, in the History of Occitania, tom. 1, page 152 and Note 41, judge that St. Jerome speaks of St. Exuperius in his 109th Letter (elsewhere the 53rd) to Riparius the presbyter, where he grieves that Vigilantius is tolerated, in these words: Those who suspect that Vigilantius was tolerated by St. Exuperius, I marvel that the holy bishop, in whose parish he is said to be a presbyter, acquiesces in his madness; and does not with the apostolic rod, and with a rod of iron, break the useless vessel and deliver it unto the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. The said writers suspect, namely, that St. Exuperius was stirred by that complaint of Jerome to act against Vigilantius, and that with that intention he wrote to Innocent the letters already mentioned. And into that opinion they were led solely by the circumstances of places and times, as is clear from the reasonings put forward in Note 41. For neither do they contend that the character of St. Exuperius was such that a suspicion of that kind could be had from it; but they believe that Vigilantius dwelt in the diocese of Toulouse, and thence conjectured that he was the very man designated by Jerome. But since that conjecture casts a stain on the good name of St. Exuperius, I have judged that the reasons alleged must be diligently weighed; and, such an examination being made, I do not hesitate to assert that all the circumstances are wholly repugnant to the said conjecture, and that it is destitute of every foundation.

[23] lack just reasons, First, St. Exuperius did not write to Innocent stirred by the complaint of St. Jerome, since he wrote perhaps before Jerome, or at any rate at almost the same time, so that Jerome's Letter, given at the end of the year 404 or in the year 405, as will be proved in Jerome, could not yet have reached Gaul. Secondly, St. Jerome, at the end of the year 406, inscribed his Commentaries on Zechariah to St. Exuperius, and celebrated him with many elogia, yet uttered no word about Vigilantius. But if St. Exuperius had in the year 404 tolerated Vigilantius in his diocese, Jerome could not have been silent about him: for he would either have reproved the negligence of Exuperius, if he had gone on tolerating him, or would have praised his fortitude, if he had dealt with the heretical fellow as he deserved. Thirdly, since of the questions proposed to Innocent only the first can be referred to the errors of Vigilantius, namely that about the incontinence of clerics, Exuperius does not seem to have taken occasion of writing from the errors of Vigilantius, but to have written solely that he might the more safely lay aside his doubt about some heads of discipline. St. Exuperius did not doubt about the sin of incontinent presbyters and deacons; but he knew that those who were incontinent sinned. He only asked with what penalty they were to be corrected, and the others held to their duty, lest they should fall in like manner. And this he could inquire whether they had fallen by the mere frailty of the flesh, or by the Vigilantian heresy, by which they judged the use of wives not unlawful for them.

[24] whereas Vigilantius dwelt in the territory of Comminges, Fourthly, Vigilantius was not in the diocese of Toulouse, so far as can be gathered from all the things which the said writers of the History of Occitania have themselves brought forward. That Vigilantius was a Gaul by nation, Jerome and Gennadius testify. He is also called by Jerome the tavern-keeper of Calagurris, and therefore some have wished to make him a Spaniard; but in vain, Jerome himself frequently opposing it and attributing that monster to Gaul. And from what part of the Gauls he was born, St. Jerome indicates in his book Against Vigilantius, num. 4, in these words: No wonder he answers to his stock, that he who was born of the seed of robbers and vagabonds (convenae) … (whence too the city of the Convenae took its name) should to this day play the robber against the Church of God. From these things the said writers acknowledge with us that Vigilantius was of the territory of the Convenae (now commonly called Comminges), which is in Novempopulania near the Pyrenean mountains and the borders of Spain. That Vigilantius dwelt there also at that time, Jerome declares at num. 7, addressing him in this manner: And because thou dwellest at the roots of the Pyrenees and art a neighbour of Iberia, etc. Vigilantius therefore dwelt in the territory of the Convenae, as the said Benedictines again acknowledge, or at least ought to acknowledge, since they say that Vigilantius after his return from Palestine betook himself to his native country. For what they reason from the dwelling of Sulpicius Severus is wholly useless, unless it be more clearly shown where Sulpicius dwelt in those years, and better proved that Vigilantius dwelt with him. For of these things we have nothing certain, and it is in no way likely that Vigilantius dwelt with Sulpicius after his heresy had become known.

[25] But now, since from Jerome we have that Vigilantius dwelt at the roots of the Pyrenees and in the territory of the Convenae, which was not of the diocese of Toulouse: it remains to investigate whether that territory seems then to have been of the diocese of Toulouse. This to me is altogether improbable, because it was at that time of another province, and today too continues in another province even ecclesiastically. Lugdunum Convenarum, afterwards destroyed, had its own bishop at least from the fifth century, under the metropolis of Eauze. This is clear from the 6th Letter of the 7th book of Apollinaris Sidonius, who lived at that time, in which he grieves that many cities lack bishops because of the persecution of Euric, the Arian king of the Goths, who would not suffer others to be substituted for the dead. And the cities are enumerated in this manner: Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Javols, Eauze, Bazas, Comminges, Auch. The four last cities were in Aquitanian Gaul and in Novempopulania, whose metropolis was then Eauze, but into whose place there afterwards succeeded Augusta of the Ausci, named in the last place. Further, from these things, which are certain and generally admitted by all, I observe that likely in the time of St. Exuperius the Convenae had a bishop of their own, and consequently that Vigilantius dwelt in that diocese, which is a neighbour of that of Toulouse. But if anyone should wish to contend that the bishopric of Comminges was erected in the fifth century itself, so that it is later than the year 404, in which Jerome was writing, he will divine without just reason, and in vain. For he will at least have to acknowledge that Eauze was the metropolis in Novempopulania, and that under that metropolis there were several bishoprics in the same province. And so, if the Convenae had not yet a bishop of their own, they will have been under some one of the neighbouring bishoprics of Novempopulania, and not under the bishopric of Toulouse, which is of Narbonese Gaul. For if the Convenae had at any time belonged to the diocese of Toulouse, the bishopric of Comminges would assuredly have remained under that metropolis.

[26] And so far am I from judging that St. Exuperius was negligent in restraining Vigilantius, [but rather by the counsel of St. Exuperius the perverse doctrines of the heresiarch] that I rather believe it was not without the counsel of their holy Bishop that the presbyters Riparius and Desiderius wrote to Jerome about his errors. Certainly Sisinnius the monk, at the same time at which he delivered the letters of Riparius and Desiderius to Jerome to set forth to him the perverse doctrines of Vigilantius, carried also letters of St. Exuperius to Jerome, nay, and a great sum of money to be distributed to the monasteries of Palestine and Egypt. That messenger, therefore, was being sent by Exuperius, but he carried also the letters of Riparius and Desiderius with the books of Vigilantius, as also many questions of the holy Brethren and Sisters of the same province, as Jerome himself testifies in his 119th Letter (elsewhere the 152nd) to the monks Minervius and Alexander, whose questions too he had brought. Wherefore it is not credible that Riparius and Desiderius sent the books of Vigilantius to Jerome without Exuperius's knowledge, but rather that all that was done by those presbyters was with his approval and will. And these complained that their parishes were being infected, by reason of nearness, with the errors of the frenzied man, and therefore from the neighbouring places they could the more easily investigate all the doctrines of the heresiarch and his supporters.

[27] seem to have been written out to St. Jerome, that they might be refuted. Further, having received their letters, Jerome in his book against Vigilantius, num. 2, speaks thus: O horror! he is said to have bishops as partners of his wickedness. This, no doubt, he had learned from the letters of the presbyters. Then at num. 3: The authors of this little Composition of mine are the holy presbyters Riparius and Desiderius, who write that their parishes are stained by his nearness, and have sent by Brother Sisinnius the books which he vomited up while snoring amid his drunkenness. And they assert that some have been found who, favouring their own vices, acquiesce in his blasphemies. These things sufficiently clearly suggest that Vigilantius had not yet been driven from the place where he was a presbyter while St. Jerome was writing that book, and scarcely allow us to doubt that the bishop in whose diocese he was not only tolerated the heresiarch, but was also infected with his errors. Nor does it stand in the way that Jerome called him a holy bishop in the Letter to Riparius, because he did not yet know whether he tolerated the perverse man out of excessive indulgence, or even favoured him. So he called Vigilantius himself, not yet well known to him, the holy presbyter Vigilantius in his 58th Letter (elsewhere the 13th) to Paulinus. So easily did St. Jerome give that title to bishops and presbyters, whose profession is holy, that from it we ought not to infer that that bishop who tolerated Vigilantius was not suspect to him at the very time in which, writing to Riparius, he was preluding against Vigilantius. For he suggests the contrary in these words, uttered about the same bishop: Let him remember that saying: "If thou sawest a thief, thou didst run with him, and with adulterers thou didst set thy portion", Psalm 49, verse 18. Yet he knew more certainly, when he refuted Vigilantius, that some bishops were addicted to the Vigilantian heresy; for he threatens them too at the end. And so not even a shadow of probability has that inconsiderately uttered conjecture which contemplates casting on St. Exuperius the stain of having tolerated Vigilantius for a time.

[28] The Saint is wonderfully celebrated by Jerome, At what time Sisinnius the monk, sent by St. Exuperius into Palestine in the year 406, reached St. Jerome, and what he did there, Jerome himself sets out in his Preface to the prophet Zechariah, whose Explanation on this occasion he inscribed to St. Exuperius. In the last part of autumn, he says, our brother, thy son Sisinnius the monk, delivered to me a Letter of thy worship. On reading which, I rejoiced that thou art safe and mindful of me, and of all the Brethren who serve the Lord in the holy places, in whose refreshment thou makest thee friends of the mammon of iniquity, and preparest eternal tabernacles, that thou mayest say with David: "How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts: my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord." For if the sparrow has found herself a house, and the turtle a nest where she may lay her young; why wilt not thou, who art a pontiff of the Lord and treadest the winepresses at the end of the world, that thou mayest give the wine of the blood of Christ to thirsting peoples, freely proclaim and say? "My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God: blessed are they that dwell in thy house." I hear that thou in the vale of tears, in the place which God set for a contest, that he might give a crown to the victors, dost dispose ascensions in thy heart, and go from strength to strength, and imitate the poverty of the Lord, that thou mayest be rich with him, and that he may lay his head in thee, and day by day be received, visited, fed, clothed; and that thou art fervent above all in the reading of the holy Scriptures.

[29] And since I desired to offer thee some little gift of my poor wit, who inscribes to him the Explanation of Zechariah; he sends much money and the explanation of the twelve Prophets which I had begun was reaching its close, I would not desert the Work I had undertaken, but what I was going to dictate even without thee, I have consecrated above all to thy name … It will be for thy good will to receive, not our learning, which is either none or small, but the will that is inclined towards thee, that thou mayest call us on to the rest and encourage us to run in the long field of the Scriptures. But if there are any to whom I before promised the interpretation both of these and of other volumes, let them pardon my incredible love for thee, and let them judge that whatever I have written to thee was written for themselves. In the Preface to book 2, St. Jerome, after he had in many words begged the prayers of the absent Exuperius, makes mention thus of the supports for want sent by him into Egypt also: While brother Sisinnius hastens to go to Egypt, that he may carry thither also the odour of the good fragrance which was sent by thee to the Brethren; and that the thirsty fields may be watered, not by the river of Ethiopia (the Nile, which brings fertility to the lands of Egypt), but by the most bountiful waters of the Gauls. In the Preface of the third book he again speaks of Sisinnius hastening into Egypt in this manner: While he himself hastens to divide thy money among the Saints, etc. So at the end of the book against Vigilantius he says that he dictated it in one night, Brother Sisinnius being in great haste, and hurrying to go to Egypt for the refreshment of the Saints.

[30] In his 119th Letter to Minervius and Alexander, again alleging the haste of Sisinnius, for the monks of Palestine, Egypt and Libya. he intimates that the most bountiful Exuperius provided for the monks of Libya also, when he speaks thus: And when I asked him to put off his journey, he began to set before me the famine of Libya, the necessities of the monasteries of Egypt, the waters of the Nile not full, the hunger of many, so that it was almost an offence against the Lord to wish to detain him longer. The Verona editors observe that instead of Libyae there was read in other editions libere, which signifies nothing there, and that they made the correction from the Verona codex. But now, from the supports for want so bountifully sent by Exuperius into Palestine, Egypt and Libya to so many thousands of monks as were living in those provinces at that time, the prudent reader will be able to gather how great a care the holy Bishop had for the monks living in his own diocese. Of the time in which these things were done we are made certain from St. Jerome's Preface to book 3 of the Commentaries on Amos, where he says that he wrote on Zechariah to Exuperius in the year 406, and afterwards in the same year wrote on Hosea, Joel and Amos, as will be said at greater length in Jerome. And so Sisinnius came to Jerome in the last part of autumn of the year 406, and departed perhaps in the month of November or at the beginning of December, so that Jerome after his going could dictate in the same year on the three minor Prophets.

[31] But the charity of St. Exuperius in relieving the want of the monks comes to be celebrated not only because he succoured the servants of God so far away, The Saint's wonderful charity toward the poor, but is still more to be esteemed because he did not give of his superfluity, but brought want upon himself that he might comfort others. This again we have from St. Jerome in his 125th Letter (elsewhere the 4th) to Rusticus the monk, whom at the end he exhorts to imitate the virtues of St. Exuperius, writing thus: Holy Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, an imitator of the widow of Zarephath, being himself hungry feeds others: and with a face pale with fastings, he is tormented by another's hunger: and he has laid out all his substance on the members of Christ. Nothing is richer than he, who carries the Body of the Lord in a wicker basket, the Blood in glass; who has cast avarice out of the temple; who without scourge or rebuke has overturned the chairs of those that sell doves, that is, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the tables of mammon, and scattered the money of the money-changers, that the house of God may be called a house of prayer and not a den of thieves. Follow thou from close at hand his footsteps, and those of the others who are like him in virtues, whom the priesthood makes both humbler and poorer. The most eminent Baronius, at the year 406, num. 37, judges that St. Exuperius by a divine spirit foreknew that barbarians would come into the Gauls, and therefore hastened to lay out everything on the poor, lest it should be snatched away by the barbarians. But of that foreknowledge of his we have no testimony; and money would have been most useful to St. Exuperius in that inundation of the barbarians.

[32] [who also sold the sacred vessels because of the want brought on by the barbarians.] Wherefore, that we may better investigate the occasion on which St. Exuperius also sold the sacred vessels, as other Saints too have done on like occasions, a few things must be observed. A vast sum of money St. Exuperius sent in the year 406 into Palestine, Egypt and Libya, to be distributed to the monks. In the year 407 the Alans, Vandals and Suevi overran and laid waste a great part of Gaul, and went on towards Spain, which they entered in the year 409, other barbarian nations meanwhile laying waste and subduing other parts of Gaul. Meanwhile the barbarians who crossed into Spain did not storm Toulouse, which St. Jerome attributes to the merits of St. Exuperius in his 123rd Letter (elsewhere the 11th) to Ageruchia, where at num. 16, having enumerated the multitude of barbarians and of captured cities, he subjoins this about certain provinces: Of Aquitaine, of the Nine Peoples, of the Lyonnese and Narbonese provinces, except a few cities, all has been laid waste: and these very cities (the cities not captured) the sword ravages without, famine within. I cannot without tears make mention of Toulouse, which, that it should not until now fall, the merits of the holy bishop Exuperius have secured. This distress of Toulouse, which the sword had ravaged without, and which famine without doubt went on ravaging within, even after the barbarians' departure into Spain, drove St. Exuperius to sell the sacred vessels, and so he was reduced to that poverty that he carried the Body of the Lord in a wicker basket, the Blood in glass. The time at which each Letter was written confirms this exposition. For to Ageruchia St. Jerome seems to have written in the year 409, when he did not yet know that the barbarians had penetrated into Spain: but to Rusticus he will have written in the year 411, or later, as will be proved at the XXX of September in St. Jerome.

[33] The Saint died in an uncertain year after 410. After what St. Jerome said in the Letter to Rusticus about St. Exuperius we find nothing, nor yet ought we straightway to conclude from that silence of the ancients that St. Exuperius died in the year 411 or the following. For neither has any successor of St. Exuperius in the episcopate become known for a very long time, so that he could have survived many years, especially if he did not obtain the episcopate save at the close of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth. And we shall not wonder at the silence of the ancients about the later deeds of St. Exuperius, if we consider that Toulouse and the neighbouring provinces of Gaul were afterwards subdued by the Goths, so that very few things only have become known about the bishops of those provinces from the year 411 until almost the end of the same century. For this cause we cannot say that Toulouse was never subdued while St. Exuperius lived. For it is established that it was taken by the Goths, who fixed their royal seat there. But it is uncertain whether it was taken while Exuperius lived, or after his death. For neither have they reasoned rightly who have said that Toulouse was not occupied while St. Exuperius lived, because in the year 409 it had not yet yielded to the arms of the barbarians. On account of this ignorance about the time of St. Exuperius's death, I have assigned most broadly the fifth century after the year 410, because in that very year

411 he could have died, or could also have survived twenty years and more.

[34] For the rest, I have not wished to make mention in its place of the alleged healing of St. Ambrose, The alleged healing of St. Ambrose is fabulous. which Bernard Gui asserts in his manuscript Life, because it is certainly fabulous. Catel observes that it is narrated in the said Life, but is not reported by St. Jerome, and that he had read it in no other place, so far as he remembered; so that Tillemont slipped in memory, Note 1 on St. Exuperius, where he rightly notes that the assertion is manifestly fabulous, but wrongly adds, although it is said to have been written by St. Jerome: for Catel, whom he cites, plainly says the contrary. The author, therefore, is Bernard Gui, who cites no more ancient writer, and himself lived nine centuries after St. Exuperius. Bernard's words Nicolas Bertrand transcribed, and perhaps others whom I have not consulted have related the same. The account itself is such that its falsity soon becomes manifest to those who know the history. For Ambrose is said to have suffered from fevers, and by the counsel of St. Jerome to have sent envoys to St. Exuperius that he might have water from the glass chalice in which St. Exuperius offered sacrifice because of his poverty; and, having received that water, to have been healed. But St. Ambrose had been dead several years before St. Exuperius used a glass chalice, which he only began to do about the year 409, when the need was extreme. Moreover between St. Ambrose and St. Jerome there was no singular friendship or commerce of letters, so far as we know, and the one was at Milan, the other in Palestine, while Exuperius was bishop — if indeed St. Ambrose lived until the episcopate of St. Exuperius. Other things too are added, awkwardly devised, which for brevity's sake I pass by.

elsewhere Exsuperio*.