ON ST. FRATERNUS, BISHOP OF AUXERRE,
IN THE DUCHY OF BURGUNDY
After the middle of the fifth century.
COMMENTARY
His memory in the sacred Calendars; the assertions of others about the Saint, the translation and visitation of his body; his cult.
Fraternus, bishop, at Auxerre in the duchy of Burgundy. (S.)
BY J. P.
Of this Saint, as of several other bishops of Auxerre elsewhere, the memory was added today by the French antiquary to the larger Hieronymian copies in Florentini; His name inserted in the ancient Martyrologies; likewise in Rabanus's in the Lucca one: At Auxerre, the deposition of Fraternus the bishop: in the Antwerp one likewise, the word deposition being however omitted; finally in the Corbie one as in the Lucca one; but in d'Achery there is added and confessor, nor is the announcement distinguished from the others by a different type. With the Lucca one there also agree the Reichenau one among us in volume VII of June, and the Martyrology of Rabanus. There are added three Supplements of the venerable Bede in volume 2 of March, the Arras, Tournai, and Liessies ones, and the Corbie Calendar in Martène; but in these a title is prefixed to the Saint's name. He is announced besides in the abridged Hieronymian ones among us: in the Augsburg one: Aut. Fraterni; in the Labbean one: Antissiodori Fraterni; the same is read in the Gellone one, but the name of the city is expressed thus: Autisiodero. A similar difference of one letter or another occurs here and there in the sacred Calendars set forth above and presently to be added, but it is too slight for it to be worth while to warn the reader of it at each announcement.
[2] The Saint is also inserted into the genuine Martyrology of Usuard, and in the pure Usuard: whether also in Ado's, as follows: At Auxerre, of holy Fraternus bishop and confessor: whether also in the pure Ado, all do not so agree. Mosander brings forward this announcement as proper to Ado, that is, not marked with an asterisk: On the same day, at Auxerre, of holy Fraternus the bishop. Rosweyde relegated it to the appendix; Solier in his observation on Usuard says that it seems doubtful whether the Saint was truly noted by Ado: Domenico Giorgi in today's annotation to Rosweyde's illustrated Ado says: Rosweyde threw Fraternus into the Adonian appendix; which we think he would by no means have done if he had inspected the Hieronymian Martyrologies, Usuard, and the other more ancient writers. Solier nevertheless preferred still to doubt whether he is recounted by Ado. I do not sufficiently grasp the force of the reasoning. For let us suppose that the Martyrologies of Jerome, Rabanus, Usuard, and the other ancient ones were inspected by Rosweyde. Was the edition of Ado to be furnished forth according to these; or rather according to the Adonian copies? For what? On this very day, in all the Hieronymian ones here cited for Fraternus, and likewise in other ancient Calendars, in the Martyrology of Rabanus and in the pure Usuard, a company of Saints is announced in Thrace, in these words in Usuard: In Thrace, the birthday of the holy Eutychius, Plautus, and Heraclea. Now let someone ask why Domenico Giorgi did not illustrate his Ado with that or a similar announcement. Ridiculous, he will say; because it is not found in the copies of Ado. The same, the proportion being preserved, will Rosweyde be able to reply to one asking why Fraternus was struck out of the pure Ado; namely, because he is not found in the purer copies of Ado: and for the same reason Solier will answer that it seems doubtful whether he was noted by Ado.
[3] But let us grant that he was truly noted by Ado. Which of the two announcements in that case is to be admitted as Ado's genuine one? is not proved with certainty. Is it the one which Mosander gave from his codices in these words: On the same day, at Auxerre, of holy Fraternus the bishop: or that which Giorgi produced from his own, framed in these words: At Auxerre, the passion of holy Fraternus the bishop, whom they hand down to have been slain on the same day on which he was also ordained bishop. Whose body is reverently held buried in the church of holy Germanus? Let it here be permitted us to employ Giorgi's own reasoning cited above, and to say that, when such a doubt occurs, that one seems to us to be preferred which is more conformable to the more ancient and better Martyrologies and sacred Calendars. But Mosander's is very nearly the same as that which is read in most of the Hieronymian ones, in Rabanus's, in Usuard's, and in the other Martyrologies and Calendars cited thus far; Giorgi's is plainly dissonant from them all; therefore we judge that the former is to be preferred to the latter, and that if Rosweyde's Ado needs any correction, Mosander's announcement is to be restored to it.
[4] Giorgi indeed brings forward the Fulda Martyrology and the History of the bishops of Auxerre, The source from which the announcement obtruded as Adonian with which the announcement or elogium of St. Fraternus taken from his codices agrees: but the authority of the aforesaid History, sprinkled, as the learned know, with almost continual errors, has slight, not to say no, weight, compared with the ancient Calendars cited. The Fulda Martyrology is later than Ado and Usuard, as Giorgi himself confesses in his Preface, saying: From the specimen of the script and from other conjectures the codex seems to have been written in the tenth century of Christ. It bears the name of no author, but from what it sometimes has, it is understood well enough that it was once in use in the monastery of Fulda. It can be called a certain epitome of Ado and Usuard: for everywhere it presents in abridgement the elogia of the Saints received from them. That what is asserted in the latter words happens generally, I do not deny. But certainly in the case of St. Fraternus it presents in abridgement neither the elogium of Usuard, nor Mosander's Adonian one, nor the very one which Giorgi brings forward as Adonian. About the two former there can be no doubt; about the third the reader will judge, when he sees the Fulda elogium no less diffuse than Giorgi's Adonian one, recited in the preceding number. Here is the Fulda one: At Auxerre, the passion of holy Fraternus the bishop: whom they report to have been slain on the same day on which he was also ordained bishop; and he was buried in the basilica of holy Germanus, bishop and confessor.
[5] probably flowed, is assigned. Indeed, to declare sincerely the sense of my mind, I believe that those elogia proceeded no more from Ado than from Usuard, but that both flowed either from the History of the bishops of Auxerre written in the ninth century, or from the Life and Miracles of St. Germanus collected in the same century by Heiric the monk. We read these things in the History in Labbe volume 1 of the Bibliotheca of Manuscripts page 417: Fraternus sat 1 day. He, on the day on which he was ordained bishop by the faithful, was crowned with martyrdom by the barbarians on the third of the Kalends of October, and was buried in the church of the most blessed Germanus: and the city was without a bishop for 6 days. These in Heiric among us in volume VII of July page 280: Holy Fraternus is put in his place on the pontifical chair. He, on the day on which he was ordained bishop by the faithful, was crowned with martyrdom by the barbarians on the third of the Kalends of October. From the same sources I judge that there flowed the elogium which in Martène volume 6 of the Amplissima Collectio column 722 is read in the Martyrology of Auxerre, and which, the clause about the place of burial being however omitted, is framed in the same words as in Giorgi's codices. The editor did not assign the date of the said Martyrology, but about it, so far as suffices for the present purpose,
a judgment can be made from the entry of the fifteenth day of December, into which the following has been inserted: At Auxerre, the dedication of the altar of the upper church, made by Pope Calixtus II. For the said Pontiff ruled the Church in the twelfth century.
[6] We do not dare with certainty to assert martyrdom for the Saint, From the texts of the martyrologists and other ancients recited, the reader by now notices, I think, that another question arises here, and one far more difficult; namely whether the Saint is to be adorned with the title of martyr, or only of confessor. For a martyr he is made by the authors of the History of the bishops, by Heiric, and by the little Works which flowed from those sources, by Domenico Giorgi's codices, by the Martyrology of Auxerre, and by the records of that same church, which Cardinal Baronius cites in today's Roman Martyrology, where with not a few other writers, especially French ones, he calls him a Martyr. On the other hand the bare word deposition argues for a confessor, in the Martyrology of Rabanus, in the Supplements of Bede, and in many Hieronymian copies; and in the Corbie one indeed, in d'Achery, the very title and Confessor is added. He is also expressly called a confessor in the Franco-Gallic Martyrology, in our manuscript Florarium, and in other Calendars of more recent writers, as in the pure Usuard. But the authority of these is so great that, although I should not wish absolutely to deny our Saint the palm of martyrdom, yet I should not dare to assert it for him with certainty, and accordingly I abstain from every title.
[7] an opinion by which almost everything But neither will the people of Auxerre be able to take this ill, if they consider how little Monsieur Le Beuf, the historian of their city and canon of the cathedral church, defers to the authority of the records and documents on which the tradition of the holy Bishop's martyrdom rests. For that author overthrows or calls into doubt everything else which is asserted about St. Fraternus in them. In the records or catalogues of the bishops and in their History Fraternus is set down as the ninth bishop in order: he himself recounts him in the seventh place. In the same and in the remaining documents, and in the aforesaid Work of Heiric, St. Fraternus is said to be the immediate successor of St. Alodius after a ten-year vacancy of the see; he himself makes him the predecessor and immediate successor of St. Germanus, and begins his episcopate from the latter's death, that is, from the year 448, so that the see was vacant for only a few days. Finally the same documents hand down that St. Fraternus was slain on the same day on which he was ordained, so that he sat only one day: he himself grants three years to his episcopate, and says that he was ordained on the twenty-sixth day of September of the year 448, but slain in the year 451 likewise on the twenty-sixth of September; although in the said documents the Saint's death is expressly noted on the third of the Kalends of October, and he is commemorated on the same day in the most ancient Calendars. Thus the aforesaid author leaves nothing which is asserted by others untouched except the holy Bishop's martyrdom. Nay, perhaps for this reason he overturns all their statements up and down, in order to make the one assertion of theirs about the martyrdom more likely: in order, I say, to connect the martyrdom with the irruption into Gaul of Attila king of the Huns, which happened about the year 451.
[8] But even if the martyrdom were certainly established, I should not for my part yet have recourse to that: handed down by others is overthrown, and the Saint is set down as the same since after about twenty years the Visigoths, having entered Gaul, long and greatly harassed the Catholics under king Euric. For by them St. Fraternus, substituted as bishop for St. Alodius, who according to Le Beuf himself died not after the year 472, could have been slain. There was, however, another reason too why the aforesaid Le Beuf placed St. Fraternus before St. Alodius in the series of the bishops, and said that he suffered about the year 451. That you may more fully understand it, it will help to have heard what Heiric the monk, mentioned at number 5, narrates in volume VII of July page 261: Saturnus was a priest and disciple of the most blessed Germanus, of a life equally most approved, and familiarly beloved by the holy man. He, when he (St. Germanus) had set out for Italy, had remained in the city (of Auxerre) by his order. On the night therefore on which the glorious confessor and bishop of the Lord (Germanus) departed by a happy passing at Ravenna, he too, placed at Auxerre, learned of his most splendid passing, an angel disclosing it, and, instructed by a divine revelation, announced it to the people; a huge multitude of whom being gathered with him, he hastens to the ridges of the Alps; where they receive Gaul's own patron, the more readily about to serve his funeral rites the more a devotion of love mixed with reverence extorted a stronger service. This is not invented, nor beaten out from the vein of an itching wit: but it is engraved on very ancient marble, the writing itself too representing the character of antiquity, and is preserved among us to this day. In the History of the bishops of Auxerre, at which we have elsewhere said that Heiric labored, the same things as to substance are reported about Saturnus in Labbe volume 1 of the Bibliotheca of Manuscripts page 417; where he is said to have remained at Auxerre by the order and in the place of St. Germanus when he was setting out for Italy; whence it is more expressly gathered that the care of the diocese was entrusted to him.
[9] These things moved Monsieur Le Beuf to think St. Fraternus the same as this Saturnus, as Saturnus the disciple of St. Germanus, and to have been advanced to the episcopal mitre before St. Alodius. He says there is no cause why we should judge that any other successor was given to St. Germanus by the clergy and people of Auxerre than Saturnus the priest: that this is far more probable than that Alogius the abbot was brought out from the monastery where he was giving himself to works of penance, whom Constantius, the coeval biographer of St. Germanus, hands down to have died while he was discharging the office of abbot: that thus in Saturnus there is united the dignity of St. Germanus's immediate successor with the glory of martyrdom: that otherwise it cannot be conceived how a man of such excellence, and a priest so greatly in St. Germanus's affection and esteem, could have been involved in so general an oblivion that no memory survived either of himself or of his burial. He adds finally that, for his conjecture to be admitted, the likeness of the names Saturnus and Fraternus also is conducive; and the more so, because Saturnus, on undertaking the episcopate, may have somewhat changed his name, which bore the mark of heathenism.
[10] does not seem to us The conjecture may be able to please others; but it does not so move me that I should think the series of the bishops should be inverted against all the documents of Auxerre. What Monsieur Le Beuf assumes about Alogius the abbot was briefly discussed in the preceding volume at the twenty-eighth day, in St. Alodius, whom we judge to be distinct from the said Alogius, and, according to the credit of the documents, the immediate successor of St. Germanus in the episcopate. But what he then infers about the oblivion of Saturnus will seem neither new nor strange to one considering how many Saints are inscribed even in the ancient sacred Calendars of particular churches about whom nothing beyond the name has become known. But neither is that oblivion in Saturnus's case so entirely general. The aforesaid Heiric and the authors of the History certainly mention him with an elogium; besides, in our manuscript Auxerre codex, which we everywhere cite under the name of M. Georges Viole, at page 27 there is given a catalogue of the disciples of St. Germanus, and among them St. Saturnus the confessor is recounted. Then in the same place at page LXXII, in the series of the holy Martyrs and Confessors of Auxerre, distributed among the several months of the year and excerpted from the Martyrology of that same church, these things are read in French: 31 (July), St. Saturnus the priest, disciple of St. Germanus, who died on the same day as his master, according to the Martyrology of St. Germanus: who governed the church of Auxerre while St. Germanus had set out for Ravenna.
[11] to be admitted. But what is here asserted about the day of his death is again opposed to Monsieur Le Beuf's conjecture; since if Saturnus were the same as Fraternus, he would have died, as Le Beuf himself lays down, on the twenty-sixth of September, or, as others hand down with the ancient Martyrologies, on the twenty-ninth. Castellanus and Saussay seem to have been ignorant of Saturnus's last day; for the latter placed him in the appendix among the Saints wandering outside the order, but the former in his Aëmeri with only the title of venerable, noting nevertheless that he is called a Saint in the ancient Martyrology of St. Germanus, in which there is a catalogue of the Saints buried in that church, and thus pointing out not altogether obscurely the place of his burial. We treated of Saturnus in volume VII of July in the Prætermissi of the thirty-first day, and referred Monsieur Le Beuf's opinion hither to be examined, which, since we think it has now been sufficiently done, we complete what remains about St. Fraternus.
[12] The Saint's memory on other days; Some things about him too were touched upon in volume 2 of July in the Prætermissi of the ninth day. The Hieronymian codices of Lucca and Corbie in Florentini gave occasion, where on the said day this announcement is given: And of Fraternus the bishop. The editor distinguished it by no mark from the others contained in the same entry; which he is accustomed to do when he judges that it is among the things added by the French antiquary; that it is nevertheless among them I should easily think, he says in the Annotations, especially because it is frequent among the Blessed of Auxerre to be added. But since the episcopal city is not expressed, it is at least doubtful whether he is our bishop of Auxerre, and certainly it is unknown to us why he is commemorated on that day. Castellanus both believed him ours and seemed to judge this day proper to him. For when on the ninth of July he had announced him thus: At Auxerre, the death (in French decès) of St. Fraternus the bishop; commemorating him again without a note of death or deposition on the twenty-ninth day of September, he noted in the margin that it was taken from the ninth of July, and enclosed the title of Martyr in brackets. I do not find the reason. Saussay in his Supplement on the third of the Kalends of November celebrates the Saint too in these words: At Auxerre, the raising of holy Fraternus, bishop and martyr, adorned on this very day of his pontifical ordination with the precious diadem of martyrdom. Most probably he had before his eyes some document of Auxerre: for indeed at the said thirtieth day of October the Saint's memory also occurs in the manuscript codex of M. Viole praised above, at page CCLXIII; but here it is said in French revelation, that is, the Revelation or rather the Disclosure of the body of St. Fraternus, ninth bishop of Auxerre: the rest being omitted which Saussay adds not sufficiently lucidly and distinctly; for one who should consult only that place might suppose that the Saint was of old both ordained and dead on this very day, namely the thirtieth of October, on which his body was raised or shown and found. Further, of what raising or finding there is here question, we are unable to inform the reader.
[13] The Saint's body, as the ancient documents persuade us, he having died on the twenty-ninth day of September the translation of his body in the ninth century, and of his tomb after the middle of the fifth century, as we judged should be broadly noted, was buried in the church of St. Germanus, and about the year 865 was thence translated with the bodies of other Saints into the new crypts, as Heiric narrates, a contemporary author and probably an eyewitness, in the Miracles of St. Germanus, volume VII of July page 280. Those crypts and the relics resting in them the most illustrious Dominique Séguier, then bishop of Auxerre, inspected in the year 1636, and in the instrument drawn up concerning the inspection and cited in several places in volume VII of September page 101, he handed down the following: A little lower down in the same crypts three sepulchres were shown to us, in one of which, which is the middle one,
a body was contained clothed in a hair shirt, with a monastic habit laid over it, which they now call a Frock, of altogether the same form in which in our time we have seen the Reformed Fathers of that same monastery clothed. But in the other two sepulchres bones were heaped up in no order, nor perhaps were all contained there. In the same place too, above the sepulchre which they judge to be St. Censurius's, raised up, we beheld a chest or wooden ark, fastened with a lock and little keys, but now consumed with age and falling into pieces, in which many relics of divers Saints were kept enclosed in separate silks. And we have now had the little ark with the bones or relics themselves carried into the nearest window, until provision should be made for a fitter and more decent place. And adjoining the aforesaid three sepulchres were four images of as many bishops painted on the walls with their inscriptions.
[14] an inspection made There follow presently four inscriptions in Latin and French: the first of St. Abbo, first abbot and afterwards bishop; the second of St. Fraternus, the third of St. Censurius, and the fourth of St. Gregory, bishops, which at last a fifth inscription follows, found beside the aforesaid wooden chest. There lurks here some obscurity, since only three sepulchres are recorded, yet the effigies of four bishops with as many inscriptions: but the same most illustrious man had before borne a torch to dispel it, when he had narrated that in the month of November in the year 1634 he had inspected the sepulchre in which the bones of St. Gregory the bishop were judged to be contained, and which at that time stood in the church itself of the monastery. M. Georges Viole, at whose entreaty, he being then Prior there, the bishop had instituted the visitation, sets the matter forth fully and lucidly in our manuscript codex page 43, saying: He (St. Gregory) rests in a stone sepulchre in the church of St. Germanus between the choir and the front part of the inner temple, to which he was in course of time carried from the crypts of that same church; although his epitaph is found in the same crypts beside (the epitaph) of St. Fraternus, of this tenor: ✠ Here rests, etc.
[15] in the seventeenth century; the present-day cult. Hence you easily conceive that the first sepulchre, in which a body was found with a monastic habit, belongs to Abbo abbot and bishop, which Viole too expressly asserts at page 93, and that of the other two, in which bones were heaped up in no order, one is St. Censurius's, the other St. Fraternus's. About this the same M. Viole reports these things at page 31: His (St. Fraternus's) sepulchre was opened in the year 1636 by the most illustrious Lord Séguier, to whom afterwards, and to M. Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France, his brother, two bones of that same Saint of moderate size were given, offered to them at Paris by him who writes, according to the mandate of the higher Superiors: but it must be that several had already then been given to others; since many are lacking in the sepulchre. But the epitaph which was inscribed to St. Fraternus's effigy the most illustrious Séguier reports thus: Here rests Fraternus of holy memory, bishop and martyr, who on the same day on which he was ordained bishop was crowned with martyrdom by the barbarians on the third day of the Kalends of October. Beyond doubt neither the effigy nor the epitaph is more ancient than the ninth century, in which the sacred relics were carried from the church into the crypts, and accordingly of no greater authority than the testimonies of the authors of the History of the bishops of Auxerre and of Heiric the monk, with whose statements the epitaph plainly agrees. Moreover, in the Breviary of Auxerre there is prescribed at first Vespers and at Lauds of the Office of St. Michael the archangel a commemoration of St. Fraternus from the Common of one martyr; but the abbey, reserving a more honorable cult for him, defers his festival to the second of October, the first unimpeded day, as M. Viole writes in French at page 37, adding nothing further, from which we might be informed with what rite in particular it is done.