Simon

ON ST. SIMON, COUNT AND MONK,

AT ROME.

IN THE YEAR MLXXX.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Simon, count and monk, at Rome. (S.)

BY J. P.

§ I. His memory in the writings of the ancients and in the sacred Calendars; the title ascribed to the Saint by several, and to be retained here.

The memory of this man, most illustrious both for family and power and for deeds bravely and piously done, Six contemporaries celebrated the Saint in writings six writers whom I know, contemporaries or nearly so, have celebrated in writings: an anonymous biographer, to be described more fully below; Pope Urban II, a Frenchman by nation, formerly called Odo and a monk of Cluny, who in the eighth year after Simon's death was raised to the Roman Chair, and adorned his tomb with verses: Fulcoius, subdeacon of the church of Meaux, who a little after Simon's death likewise wrote some verses under the name of his epitaph: Hariulf, abbot of Oudenburg in Flanders, who in the Acts of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, drawn up at the beginning of the 12th century, inserted a notable elogium of count Simon: John, a monk of Bèze in the duchy of Burgundy, who in the Chronicle of his monastery, compiled about the same time (for he is said to have died about the year 1120), bears honourable testimony about him: finally Guibert, abbot of Blessed Mary of Nogent in the diocese of Laon, who in book 1 of his own Life (he died in the year 1124) drew together into a compendium the Deeds of Simon. This compendium alone I transfer hither, so that the studious reader may have the series of his chief Deeds in view, as it were, at the very threshold, intending to produce the words and testimonies of the rest in the course of the Commentary; namely when I shall have judged them apt for confirming and illustrating the History of our Count.

[2] and Guibert the abbot indeed And so abbot Guibert, published in print by d'Achery, has this in the cited book, chapter 10: But he who made Paul for himself out of Stephen's prayer, the same much more happily and widely propagated it through another sufficiently more powerful man. For a certain Simon, son of count Ralph, enriched the religion of our time with the wonderful brightness of an unlooked-for change. And how famous this Ralph was everywhere for power among the Franks, what cities he invaded, how many towns won by wonderful shrewdness he held, many survivors who remember his acts are witnesses. How great he was could also be conjectured from this one thing, that he had as wife, after her husband's death, the wife of king Henry and likewise the mother of king Philip. So young Simon, when his father had died, having obtained the honour of his counties, held it but a short time. For some relate that the cause of so hastened a conversion was this. In a certain town, which had come to him rather by usurpation than by inheritance, the remains of that same father had been laid. Which the Son, fearing that it might harm his father's soul, resolved to carry to a place which stood to him by right. And when, before the removal, it was uncovered and laid bare before the Son's eyes, whereas of that most powerful

begetter, once most fierce, he beheld the mouldering body, he betook himself to the contemplation of the wretched condition of man. And from that time whatever of exaltation and of glory smiled upon him he now began to loathe. This will therefore having been conceived, with his desire at last growing fervent, he brought forth what he was in labour with, and, a fugitive from his country and his own people, passing the Frankish borders, he withdrew into Burgundy to Saint-Oyend in the territory of the Jura.

[3] I have heard also that he had betrothed to himself a certain young woman of the noblest family, with a notable elogium who, when she had learned that the most loving Youth had given a divorce to her and to the world, not enduring to seem inferior herself, joined herself, a virgin destined to persevere, to the virginal troops of those serving God. Some time having elapsed after his taking the monastic habit, he made a return to France, and the purity of his discourse and the humility of his mind, which he bore in his face, so animated so many and such great men and women, that countless companies of both sexes were at that time brought together to follow that path of his, and from every quarter very many were summoned to that purpose by the example of his name. Indeed the zeal of the Man greatly stirred up a swarm of knightly men. Here Guibert stops, recording nothing of the Man's last deeds and pious death, whom however he long survived among the living. But the aim which he had set himself did not require it. For, as I understand, he intended solely to set forth the wonderful conversions of great men of his time, whose examples had spurred others also to send back word of dismissal to the vanities of the world, and so had brought much increase and splendour to religion and the monastic state: and he sets forth the examples of the conversions of Evrard, count of Breteuil in Picardy, of count Simon, and of Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians.

[4] But neither is it altogether certain whether he did not commit to writing what he reported about Simon before his death. perhaps while he was still living: by some of the ancients with no title, Guibert indeed, brought into the world in the month of April of the year 1053, as Mabillon proves in volume 4 of the Benedictine Annals, page 540, was counting the twenty-eighth year of his age when Simon ceased to live in the year 1080, as we shall show in its place from other writers and documents, from which also the quoted words of Guibert will receive light. But Guibert refrains from the title of Saint or Blessed perhaps for the reason just mentioned, that Simon was then still living; perhaps for the reason which probably held back other ancients too from ascribing either title to him, namely Hariulf and John the monk of Bèze, although otherwise, as I hinted above, they speak very honourably of Simon: namely because the public veneration of the Gallican people was delayed by the absence of the sacred relics of one who died and was buried at Rome: which veneration was at length stirred up when the sacred body, or at least some parts of it, came from Italy into the Gauls. But that they did come into the Gauls, although the time is not established, we shall dig out from what follows.

[5] Alberic, however, a monk of Trois-Fontaines in the diocese of Châlons in Champagne in the 13th century, by others with that of Saint discoursing in many places and not without great praise about count Simon, for the most part joins the title of Saint to his name. I bring forward one place and another from his Chronicle, which Leibniz published in print. At the year 1061: It is to be known, he says, that the countess Alaïdis, sister of holy Simon, bore two sons to Theobald, count of Champagne, etc. At the year 1093: There died Roger, third bishop of Châlons; whom Philip succeeds, brother of Hugh count of Champagne, born of Alaïdis, sister of holy Simon, etc. Under the name of Saint too he comes in the title prefixed to our manuscript copies of the Life, two taken from the Clairmarais codex and a third from that of Rouge-Cloître, as follows: Life of St. Simon. He is called Saint more than once in the compendium of the Life, which we have translated into French from the lessons, as we believe, of his Office. He is constantly called Saint by Chifflet and Bouchet, often to be cited; likewise by Morlière in the Illustrious families of Picardy, by Boguet in the French Life of St. Claudius, bishop of Besançon, and by the brothers Sainte-Marthe in volume 4 of the Gallia Christiana among the abbots of the monastery of the Jura. The same title, finally, is ascribed to him in various sacred Calendars, both manuscript and printed.

[6] as a title, Before the rest I put two Calendars of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, one of which is transcribed from a manuscript of the monastery of St. Saviour of the Cistercian Order at Antwerp, the other from a manuscript of the monastery of St. Michael of the Premonstratensian Order, likewise at Antwerp. At the XXX day of September in the former is read: Of holy Symeon; in the second, Of St. Simon; then in both is added: monk, who was the son of Ralph, count of Veredenna. At the same day he is announced in the following. In our manuscript Florarium Sanctorum: On the same day, of holy Simon, count and confessor. He, while he was still a layman and noble by family, stood forth imitable and distinguished in life, and rested with a most holy end. In the German Martyrology, which was published in the year 1599 and is commonly called by the name of Canisius: Likewise at Rome, the deposition of St. Simeon, monk and confessor, who was the son of the count of Vermandois. In the Supplement to the Gallican Martyrology of du Saussay: Among the men of Vermandois, of holy Simeon the count, who is honoured there in the abbey of Vermand of the Premonstratensian Order in the diocese of Noyon. Finally in the general Catalogue of the Saints of Philip Ferrari: Among the men of Vermandois, of holy Simon the count. In others, but fewer, he is honoured only with the name of Blessed.

[7] by others with that of Blessed In Greven's Addition to Usuard in Sollier: At Rome, the deposition of blessed Symeon, monk and confessor, son of the count of Vermandois. In the Benedictine Menology of Bucelin, where Andrew of Bamberg is cited, volume 2 of the Saints of the Order: On the same day, the deposition of blessed Simeon or Simon, monk and confessor, son of Ralph count of Vermandois, who from being a consul and chief officer of the king of the Franks became a most humble servant of Christ, and as much as he once shone in purple, so much did he afterwards blaze forth in the cowl. The same, rendered into Spanish, Antonio de Heredia translated into the third volume On the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Order of St. Benedict, distributed through the several months and days of the year. These are somewhat favoured by the author of Simon's Life in the Prologue, which he thus begins: Since the entreaty of certain men of God presses us to speak of the acts of the blessed man Simon …: and hence perhaps d'Achery, who printed that Life after the works of abbot Guibert, page 671, hitherto lying hidden, as he testifies in his Observations on the works of the same Guibert, page 596, in the monastery of Ourscamp near Noyon of the Cistercian Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, called him only Blessed.

[8] he was called; we, with the greater number, The same thing Mabillon did, both in the Benedictine Annals, as often as mention of count Simon occurs, and in part 2 of Century 6 of the Saints of his Order, page 370 and following, where from d'Achery's edition, collated with two manuscript codices, he printed that Life. But after d'Achery and Mabillon, I know not whether on their authority, the word blessed began to be more commonly applied to our Count; I have found only one later than Mabillon, Denis de Sainte-Marthe or his continuator, who in volume 4 of the reprinted Gallia Christiana, column 247, retained the appellation of Saint. But I said perhaps that d'Achery marked him with no other name than Blessed on account of the words of the biographer given, because he brings forward no reason why he did so. But certainly, in my judgment, if he had no other, that offers no sufficient argument for introducing a new and general rule. For as the appellation blessed or blessed man has sometimes been more liberally bestowed on men, whether living or dead, on whom the honour of the Blessed, as we now understand it, was never afterwards conferred; so not rarely the titles of Blessed or Saint are given indifferently to the chief inhabitants of heaven; nor will anyone rightly think himself bound always to use the former, when the other is both ancient and was once more common, which happens here, as will be plain to one comparing the age and number of those who called our Count Saint with those who down to d'Achery's edition of the Life named him Blessed.

[9] There is added — and this indeed spurred me not a little to adhere to that older and more common usage — we call him Saint. there is added, I say, the illustrious family and the name of places in the Gauls which are believed to be derived from the name of our Simon: the Family, namely, which took its origin from his sister in the 12th century, and with great increase of splendour has been propagated down to our age under the title of Lords of Saint-Simon, as will be shown more fully elsewhere; but of the places, one is a village with a castle in Picardy, commonly Saint Simon or San-Simonius, which, as James Imhof testifies in his Genealogy of the excellent families of France, page 199, where he treats of the aforesaid family of Saint-Simon, received its name from Simon, son of Ralph of Crépy, famed for holiness, and in the century last past was marked with the title of a duchy with the dignity of a Peer of France. Of this place too there will be talk hereafter, as also of another, which was a Priory of the Order of St. Benedict in the diocese of Besançon, founded by our Count, and called to this day: the Priory of St. Simon of Muthua, or Multua.

§ II. His annual cult with an Office; his relics.

The cult asserted for him among the men of Vermandois There were in the announcements of the martyrologists quoted in the preceding § some things which needed elucidation or correction: but we have passed these by unnoticed, because they will have to be discussed more fully in the course of the Commentary. Here, to open the way for proving the Saint's cult, we observe the statements of du Saussay and Ferrari, who announce Simon among the men of Vermandois: du Saussay, I say, producing no testimony, and Ferrari alleging in his Annotations a French Calendar and some monuments, I know not what, of the abbey of Vermand. Certainly these cannot be understood, as commonly happens, of the place of his death, since it is established that he passed to a better life at Rome. Were perhaps his sacred relics at some time carried thither from Rome and deposited in the abbey of Vermand, and on that occasion did he obtain a cult there? Indeed this would not be wonderful, since, as will be seen afterwards, the sister and heiress of St. Simon was married to the count of Vermandois, and through her or her sons or grandsons the said translation and deposition of the relics could have been procured. But these are mere conjectures, which it is not granted to confirm by any testimony. There is added that the cult itself in the abbey of Vermand, asserted by du Saussay, is called into doubt. For Bolland noted the following in our manuscript copy of the Life: Him (Simon) du Saussay in the Supplement to the Gallican Martyrology writes to be honoured in the abbey of Vermand of the Premonstratensian Order. The Reverend Lord Maurice du Pré of the same Order, in book 2 On the Christian affairs of Amiens, chapter 5, where he describes his genealogy and conversion, says that this is wholly unknown to the Religious of the said monastery, and that Lord Le Vasseur does not mention it in the Antiquities of Noyon.

[11] is not proved: whether it has now ceased, To the same purpose belongs Mabillon's preliminary observation on the Life, part 2 of Century 6 of the Benedictine Saints, page 374: Du Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology and Ferrari in the general Catalogue of the Saints mention Simon's name with

the title of Blessed: yet it is not clear whether he was ever honoured with any public cult. Nay, that he is honoured with the title of Saint by du Saussay and Ferrari, and was honoured with the same before by not a few others, is clear from what has been said: and from what is to be said it will be plain that it cannot rightly be doubted that he both was honoured somewhere with a public cult and is so honoured even now. Somewhere, I say: for since Mabillon had read du Saussay, and nevertheless doubts about a public cult in general, I shall readily believe that he did not desert du Saussay's opinion before he had consulted the Premonstratensian Religious of the abbey of Vermand and had received the same or a like answer as we reported above from the work of the Reverend Lord Maurice du Pré. Nor yet would I dare thence to conclude with certainty that a public cult was never shown to Simon there. For, as may be seen in Louis-Charles Hugo in the Premonstratensian Annals, volume 2, columns [ ] and 1125, the church of the abbey of Vermand with the rest of its buildings was consumed by flame in the year 1142, and about the year 1338 Edward III, king of England, directed arms and battle-line against Philip VI, king of France, at the instigation of Robert, count of Artois, and entering the borders of Picardy as a ravager, laid waste the abbey of Vermand, threw down the buildings, and burned the nave of the church, not yet completely repaired.

[12] which once existed? In either disaster, if there were any relics of Simon there, if any monuments of a public cult, they could have perished or been scattered, and therefore the cult could have ceased, and by the lapse of time his memory could have been so blotted out that in the 17th century Maurice du Pré and Jacques le Vasseur could learn nothing on this matter from the Premonstratensians. But since it not rarely happens that ancient written documents do not exist in the very places to which they pertain, yet are preserved, whether in the original or in copies, in the libraries or archives of others, it would be nothing new if the monuments which Ferrari cites had come to his hands from elsewhere, or if similar ones had given the lead to du Saussay, who from an ancient cult discovered there gathered, perhaps without further investigation, a present and persevering one. Shall we judge the same of Claude Chastelain, who, otherwise no negligent investigator of matters of this kind, in his universal Martyrology of the Saints both elucidates what is obscurely asserted in other Calendars and undoubtingly affirms the cult about which we here dispute? Let him be heard at the XXIX day of September: At Rome, blessed Simon, count of Crépy in the district of Valois (en Valois), afterwards a monk (in the monastery) of Saint-Oyend, now called Saint-Claude, founder of Selve-Rouge in Champagne and of several other monasteries, laid in a tomb at St. Peter's in the Vatican, particularly honoured by the Premonstratensians of Vermand in Picardy. But be it that he neither has nor ever had a public cult in the abbey of Vermand, that need not detain us; since we are more certain that he is honoured with such a cult elsewhere.

[13] This information we report as received from Father Pierre-François Chifflet, In the abbey of Saint-Claude, from whose repositories — he died at Paris in the Clermont college of the Society of Jesus — we obtained a vast manuscript Work which he had prepared for the press and entitled The Sacristy of the Jura monastery of Condat, etc. This Work has been described at length and partly printed among us in volume 1 of the month of June from page 646, on occasion of St. Claudius, bishop of Besançon and abbot of the Jura. Wherefore it will suffice here to have given the titles of the four parts into which it is divided. Part the first. Chronicle of the abbots of the monastery of St. Augendus of the Jura or of St. Claude, etc. Part the second. On the first abbots of the monastery of Condat, Romanus, Lupicinus and Augendus, by the author, etc. Part the third. On St. Claudius, abbot of Condat, etc. Part the fourth. On some other alumni of the monastery of St. Augendus, etc. To the second part are appended Jura Illustrations; to the third, Claudian Illustrations; to the fourth, Observations on the Life of St. Simon, from a count a monk. Of the last the following § will give occasion of saying more. But since talk of the monastery in which St. Simon professed the religious life will often recur, and since it was called differently at different times, for the reader's greater convenience I transfer hither its description from the preliminary Commentary to the Acts of St. Claudius, in the cited volume, page 644.

[14] Among the ancient Sequani, in the present county of Burgundy, of which an account is here given, there is a high and widely extended mountain, on which the name Jura, given it of old, remains to this day. In the part of this towards Bresse and Bugey St. Romanus began the solitary life, whose Acts we illustrated on the XXVIII of February. To Romanus was joined his brother St. Lupicinus, whose Acts we likewise gave on the XXI of March: and both raised there the monastery of Cordatescum [*], which afterwards St. Eugendus governed as abbot, of whom we treated at the Kalends of January: and from him it was afterwards called the monastery of St. Eugendus, commonly Saint-Oyan, until the twelfth century of Christ, as is established below from the Life and miracles of St. Claudius, from whom in the following centuries the monastery was named, and along with it the town adjoining it, which down to our times is commonly called nothing else than Saint-Claude. Thus Henschen. Now to Chifflet.

[15] The first thing pertaining to the present matter he supplies in the Chronicle of the abbots, among the relics of other Saints where, after he had reported that the monastery of St. Claude was miserably burnt down about the year 1419, and again in the year 1519, and a third time in 1549, and a fourth in 1579, he thinks it came about thence that many ancient charters are today missing, even such as were drawn up under the first and second stock of the kings of the Franks, whose subscriptions, he says, with the characters of the times, we read noted in an old parchment five hundred years ago. Then, some things being interposed, treating of Ferdinand de Rye, archbishop of Besançon and abbot of St. Claude, he adds: In his time, namely in the year MDCXXVI, on the XXI of March and the XVI of May, the reverend lord Claude de la Mar, Major Prior of the monastery, with his colleagues, transferred the half-burnt bones of St. Romanus and St. Lupicinus and of the other domestic Saints, which had survived the fires, into two newly wrought reliquaries overlaid with gold, where they were heaped up indiscriminately, except a few which, still distinguished by caskets and titles, are kept enclosed in those larger chests.

[16] his sacred bones are listed, In these two shrines, which were opened to me by the kindness of the most noble rectors of the monastery, I think I distinguished the bones of about eighteen bodies, held as sacred relics; namely of those, whether abbots or private monks, who in the old charters of the monastery are noted with the title of Saint, although not all are inscribed in the Martyrology on fixed days, nor are all honoured with proper Offices. These are, besides the holy Augendus and Claudius, each placed on the chief altar in his own silver shrine: St. Romanus abbot; St. Lupicinus abbot, St. Palladius, St. Sabinianus deacon, St. Valentinus deacon, St. Justus, St. Minausius abbot, St. Antidiolus abbot, St. Olympius abbot, St. Sapientius abbot, St. Talasius abbot, St. Dagamodus abbot, St. Audericus abbot, St. Injuriosus abbot, St. Rusticus abbot, St. Autfridus abbot, St. Simon, from a count a monk. Nor yet are all the bones of these enclosed in those two chests. For the heads of St. Romanus and St. Lupicinus are kept separately in the Priories which are named after them; and an arm-bone of St. Simon is kept in the Priory of Muthua, to which that holy Man gave its beginning: and the thigh of St. Justus with his right leg and foot remain in the Priory of Salesia or de Salicibus in the diocese of Vienne.

[17] and his feast is honoured with an Office The same matter concerning St. Simon he treats somewhat more fully in part 4 of his Work in the Observations on his Life, and in such a way indeed as to leave no doubt that Simon is there held in the number of those who in the ancient charters of the monastery are noted with the title of Saint, but also in the number of those whose festivity is inscribed in the Martyrology and is kept every year with an ecclesiastical Office. Let us give here too Chifflet's words: Of the day of St. Simon's death this is to be noted in passing, that it is assigned by the author of his Life to the day before the Kalends of October. But in the Necrology of St. Eugendus it is placed one day earlier: for it has thus: "On the third of the Kalends of October died Simon, count of Champagne, a monk of our Congregation." Whence we think that in his Life the day of his burial is designated, which most call the deposition: but in the Necrology the day on which his happy soul was loosed from the bonds of the body. His festivity is noted in the Martyrology, and is kept in the monastery of St. Eugendus on the third day of October, or the fifth of the Nones, at the discretion of the monks of the place on account of the concurrence of other Offices. Of the day of his death we shall treat in its place, but the feast-day is confirmed by a French manuscript which I have before my eyes.

[18] on the 3rd of October. It is not known how It is entitled: Compendium of the Life of St. Simon, a Benedictine monk of the abbey of St. Claude, and at its end are read these words: He was famous for miracles in life and after death. His festivity is celebrated on the third of October. It is likely that that Compendium is the very lessons of the Office, rendered from Latin into French for the sake of the sacred virgins of St. Ursula at Crépy, who desired to know the Acts of the Saint, once count of Crépy. For Chifflet, that he might omit no diligence in obtaining, from wherever he could, documents fit for illustrating the deeds of St. Simon, had recourse to the town of Crépy also, and made use of the service of Anne Hervé, a religious virgin there at St. Ursula's. Of her we keep two letters written back to him on that business in the months of March and April in the year 1670. Some words of the former I add in Latin from the French: It escaped me to indicate to you that we have here no other books or writings about that great holy Simon besides what I sent to you from Guibert, abbot of Nogent, and another short Compendium which I had appended to the Life composed by the said abbot, taken, as I believe, from the Office, which the venerable Father Prior of Bonlieu had sent to our two deceased mothers, his pious sisters, (and) which he indicated was sung in the abbey of St. Claude on the III of October, the feast-day of the same St. Simon. That French Compendium and the Life prefixed to it, ascribed to abbot Guibert, perhaps because it was mixed in with his writings, but which properly is a French translation of the Life to be printed by us, will be of no use here, since the things contained in them are sufficiently set forth in the Latin documents.

[19] Of the sacred relics Chifflet also resumes his discourse in the said Observations, and adds some things about the magnificent burial given to the Saint when he died at Rome, his bones, though he was buried at Rome, thither which things — about the burial, that is — although they will afterwards have to be treated anew and confirmed by the testimonies of older writers, I have judged for the sake of clearness should not be separated from the rest. Burial was given to his sacred body among the Roman Pontiffs in the Vatican basilica: over which a mausoleum was placed, by the care and at the expense of Matilda, queen of the English, of magnificent workmanship with various precious marbles

built. On the tomb of the great Man four distichs were inscribed by a great man, Odo of Châtillon-sur-Marne, who afterwards was Pope Urban, the second of that name. Formerly that monument was a sight for pilgrims to Rome. Since then the Vatican basilica of St. Peter has been often altered, and none appears today; whether it still lies hidden in the Vatican cemetery, or was overthrown to give place to new structures. The author of Roma subterranea, volume 1, book 2, chapter X, after he had described several figures of the Vatican monuments which still survive, says: "Certainly indeed it must be believed that many more and perhaps nobler than these still exist in the ampler part of the same cemetery which remains, and has not yet been attempted by anyone for searching, since the passages are blocked up." Then after a few words: "It is greatly to be lamented," he says, "that on account of the construction of the new basilica, the cemetery being utterly destroyed, and the sacred monuments of the ancient piety of Christians which stood there being buried together in the darkness of oblivion, religion has suffered a vast loss."

[20] Of any translation of St. Simon's relics we have nowhere read; may have come: one of them is honoured in the Priory of St. Simon. yet since his arm-bone is kept in the Priory of Muthua, which he founded (and pious suppliants are believed to be helped when it is dipped in wine and that wine distributed among the people), I think the rest of his bones are held in the two great shrines which contain the relics of about twenty holy men of the Jura monastery, confused and undistinguished after the fires of the monastery, whereas before they were distinguished by caskets and inscriptions. Thus Chifflet, who in part 2 of the Work, chapter 9, on the Priories established anywhere in the world which look to the monastery of St. Claude as members to their head, assigns among those established in the diocese of Besançon the Priory of St. Simon of Multua, without doubt the same where he has just indicated that the arm-bone of St. Simon is kept and honoured, and which he wrote once and again as the Priory of Muthua. For in the whole catalogue no Priory of Muthua occurs, nor any other whose name is so like it. The Catalogue has this: The Priory of St. Simon of Multua is founded in the year MLXXVIII by holy Simon the count, a little before made a monk at Saint-Oyend, namely that he might avoid the throng of those coming to him thither to pay their respects. Now by royal and pontifical authority, with the consent of the parties concerned, it has been assigned to the college of Dole of the Society of Jesus. It is likely that the name of St. Simon came to that place both because he is acknowledged the first founder of the Priory, and because his relics were held there in great veneration.

others, Condatescense*

§ III. The Life written by a contemporary; Chifflet's Observations on it, and their use.

The Life, which by a contemporary author The chief editions of the Life we have already assigned in §1, namely d'Achery's from a manuscript of the monastery of Ourscamp, and Mabillon's from that first edition collated with two codices. We have four manuscript copies of it: the first is in our parchment codex, marked P 158; the second and third are taken from the Clairmarais codex, the fourth from that of Rouge-Cloître. This last is mutilated in many places; wherefore, neglecting it, we shall reprint the Life according to the others and the said editions, and shall declare the variant readings and here and there in one or another the chief omissions, either in the margin or in the Annotations; it remains to investigate what is to be judged about the author. The more common opinion is that he was contemporary with or coeval with the Saint: and Mabillon says this is established from the Prologue and the end. In the Prologue he speaks thus: That we may say something about the acts of the blessed man Simon for the profit of the hearers, gathering his several deeds and recognizing what is certain, we have taken care to set them forth in words, and to assign them both in writings and in words. And thus he concludes his narration: These things and the others which have been written about Simon, those who, being of his own household in the world, most religious men, received the spiritual habit with him, have testified to be so, as they beheld them with their eyes and heard them with their ears.

[22] was written, according to some, Chifflet, disregarding the words of the Prologue, which indeed do not so evidently prove contemporaneity as the words of the last clause, begins thus his manuscript Observations on the Life: His name (the biographer's) I have nowhere found: of his condition it is a conjecture that he was a monk, and indeed of St. Eugendus of the Jura, which monastery it especially concerned to commend to posterity the memory of so illustrious an Alumnus of its own. His date, moreover, he himself discloses, when at the end of the Work he affirms that whatever he wrote about him was reviewed and approved by the testimony of those who, being of his own household in the world, received the spiritual habit with him. But since in chapter XVIII (in our edition numbers 29 and following) he mentioned Anselm, from abbot of Bec already by then archbishop of Canterbury and Apostolic legate (which dignities he obtained from the year MXCIII), from this too it is urged that this Life of St. Simon was written not [*] far from the year one thousand and ninety-five, and thus about the fifteenth year after St. Simon had departed to the heavenly ones. The fifteenth, he says, because he attaches Simon's death to the year 1080, of which afterwards.

[23] about the year 1095, The writers of the Literary History of France, volume 8, page 427, do not depart much from Chifflet's view, but what he laid down from conjecture, and indeed a most likely one, they affirm without hesitation, that the biographer was a monk of St. Claude, that is, of the Jura monastery of St. Eugendus; but this for my part I cannot elicit as an indubitable fact from any word of the whole Life. Besides this they assert that that Life was put together before the end of the eleventh century, and that this is plainly drawn out from the manner in which the author writes of St. Anselm, whom he brings forward as lately raised to the dignity of the archbishopric of Canterbury; and to this he was raised in the year 1093. Finally they conclude that it is altogether credible that the Work was finished in one of the two following years. I shall willingly confess that the author's manner of speaking is such that he may be believed to have written of a matter not long past; but if anyone should contend that his Work was finished some years later than the said authors will have it, I do not see what solid objection could be made from that manner of speaking.

[24] The biographer sets forth in the cited place an apparition of St. Simon, dead for some time, made to Robert his fellow monk, according to us, as by the reasons brought forward in which the latter was bidden to announce certain things to Anselm, abbot of holy Mary of Bec, a prudent and most reverend man. Then, intending, as I understand, to instruct his readers more fully as to what Anselm is meant, he adds: This is that most religious man Anselm, who from abbot obtained the dignity of archbishop of Canterbury, and [] of the Apostolic legation in England. St. Anselm died in the year 1109 on the XXI day of April, on which his Acts have been illustrated among us. Let us suppose then for a moment, that I may not run too far, that the biographer wrote only about the end of St. Anselm's life, and that when mention of him occurred he wished to designate him more distinctly to the reader: ought he to have used other words than he used here? There is added that in another place he speaks in such a way that there cannot but be a suspicion that he wrote after Anselm's death. At number 20 he relates that Simon went to Philip, king of the Franks, at the request of Hugh of good memory, abbot of Cluny. But the title of good memory, as the writers of the Literary History* themselves confess in their Annotations, if it were decisive — if, I say, it always indicated a person dead whose name it is attached to — certainly he would not have finished his Work before the death of St. Anselm; since St. Hugh of Cluny survived him about eight days among the living, dying in the same year, on the night preceding the XXIX day of April, on which day he has been treated of among us. But, they say, it will be seen in the course of the work that that title was given in this (eleventh) century even to living men. Be it so. But neither will they deny, I think, that examples of this kind are rare, and that by that title the dead are commonly denoted.

[25] Wherefore I do not find, at least in the biographer's text about St. Anselm, is shown, perhaps somewhat later, a sufficient reason for saying that, when he called St. Hugh of good memory, he departed from the more common manner of speaking. You will ask why the biographer called Hugh of good memory but not Anselm, who died eight days before? It will be answered that Hugh's death was known to him, but not Anselm's: the one died in France and in the neighbourhood, the other in England. But it may be asked on the other side: if the biographer knew that both were then still living, why did he attach that title to the one and not to the other? There is another thing which might be objected, and which at first sight presents some difficulty. The Saint died, more probably, in the year 1080, and his Life was approved by those who had been of his household in the world and had received the spiritual habit with him; and so it must be laid down that these survived him about 30 years, if the Life was written after Hugh's death. But observe that Simon lived only about three years from taking the habit; is it any wonder if some of his household, younger in age, had survived forty years and more?

[26] Further, although the biographer may be believed to have committed to writing most, and perhaps all, at least of the Saint's more famous deeds, it needs much explanation. he is far from having left us a perfect History of him. He marked neither his country, nor the year of his birth or death; his parents' names indeed he expressed, and added other things from which you may conjecture that they were both most illustrious in family and most powerful in wealth; but he added neither titles nor dignities from which you might acquire a particular knowledge of the family: he kept silence as to whether he had brothers or sisters, so that you do not know whether he was his parents' only child or the firstborn son, or in what way he alone, as he hints, obtained their inheritance. He recorded nothing about his infancy or boyhood, leaping at once from his parents' names to his military life, to the death of those same parents, to the wars against Philip king of the Franks for preserving his inheritance, to the peace, to marriages twice avoided by pious contrivance, to the monastic life, etc., almost without any note of time and without those circumstances which might fulfil the reader's desire. In short, he compounded such a Work that, if you regard our plan of writing, it needs elucidation almost everywhere, and it is plainly necessary to prefix to it a Commentary of sufficient amplitude, in which most things may be discussed and, so far as can be done, declared and completed by the help of other writers and documents.

[27] The chapters of Chifflet's Observations on it Much help hither will be brought by Chifflet's manuscript Work, designated above, in the Observations on the said Life and on the deeds of St. Simon: but before I declare how these were put together and of what use they will be to us, it is well to premise the titles of the seventeen chapters into which they are divided, as they are given

among us in volume 1 of June, page 647.

Chapter I. On the author who wrote the Life of St. Simon.

II. On his father Ralph and his three wives, of whom he was related to the third (namely Anne, widow of Henry, king of the Franks) in a degree then forbidden.

III. On Walter, St. Simon's brother, slain near Reims; Vitry several times occupied by king Philip I.

IV. On the two sisters of St. Simon, of whom the elder in age was betrothed to Herbert, count of Vermandois, the fourth of that name; but the younger, named Adelais, was the wife first of Bartholomew, lord of Broyes, afterwards of Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres.

V. Our opinion about the second marriage of Adelaide, widow of Bartholomew, with Theobald of Blois is established by a new argument: namely from this, that the whole inheritance of Bartholomew and Adelaide, and of their son Hugh Bardulf, came to Theobald and his sons or grandsons.

VI. Whether besides Adela, countess of Vermandois, and Aalis, or Alais or Adelheid, first the wife of Bartholomew lord of Broyes, afterwards of Theobald count of Blois, there were two other sisters of St. Simon: Elisabeth, commonly Rosa, and Arwis, nuns at Kala; who also gave its beginning to the nunnery of Rozoy.

[28] the chapters and titles are reviewed VII. Against the foregoing certain difficulties are raised from Alberic's Chronicle.

VIII. The origin and series of the illustrious family which is named from St. Simon.

IX. St. Simon translates the body of his dead father Ralph from Montdidier, where it had lain for three years, and deposits it in the church of St. Arnulf at Crépy.

X. Who St. Arnulf was, the patron of the church of Crépy, enriched by St. Simon.

XI. A wife is sought for count Simon, the daughter of Heldebert, count of the March of Auvergne. She at his exhortation becomes a nun at La Chaise-Dieu; whence she appears to have been transferred to Larrey near the castle of Dijon.

XII. What was the consanguinity of count Simon with Matilda, queen of the English.

XIII. At what time and under what abbot St. Simon became a monk at Saint-Oyend, and what followers of his holy purpose he had.

XIV. At what time St. Simon was present at the translation of the sacred Shroud of Compiègne into a golden chest, offered by Matilda, queen of the English.

XV. The year of Robert Guiscard, reconciled to the Apostolic See through Simon. His Roman dwelling at St. Thecla's.

XVI. On St. Simon's death on the III of the Kalends of October MLXXX, his burial, mausoleum, epitaph and the translation of his relics.

XVII. The chronological heads pertaining to St. Simon's History are gathered together.

[29] Among the chapters of the Observations now enumerated, some are very short, and the manner in which they were put together, such as the first, on the author of the Life, which I have transcribed entire at number 22; others are quite lengthy, such as the third and the four following; and in these indeed, and in others too, Chifflet often digresses into matters scarcely, or not even scarcely, pertaining to the Saint. Let chapter 10 be an example, where he inquires about St. Arnulf, patron of the church of Crépy. First he cites and quotes Martyrologies which at the XV of the Kalends of August acknowledge St. Arnulf as bishop of Tours and martyr; then he adduces works of other authors in which he is called neither bishop nor martyr. Then, beginning from St. Arnulf's country, from the names of his parents, from the Baptism conferred on him by St. Remigius, he runs through nearly every chapter of his Life down to his blessed death; he mentions the translation of his relics, and finally wonders at St. Gregory of Tours' silence about Arnulf: all which things, even if they had not been fully related and laboriously discussed in our Work at the XVIII day of July, no one would rightly demand should be transferred hither.

[30] But just as he wove into his Observations these and similar things not conducing to the present purpose, and how they are to be used here, is set forth. so he did not touch upon several things which for our plan we have been accustomed to examine. Examples will offer themselves of their own accord in the course of the work; you have one and another already in what was disputed above about the cult which some assert for Simon in the abbey of Vermand, and about the title of Saint being rather to be given him than that of Blessed, of which Chifflet said not a word. Besides, he did not produce his proofs, that is, his instruments and the testimonies of the ancients, in those places where he was discussing the matter for whose confirmation they were useful or necessary, as we are wont to do in our preliminary Commentaries; but he put them off to the end of his Work, all to be exhibited together, and some indeed drawn up in the Latin, others in the French tongue. Hence I have not judged that his Lucubration should be printed either entire or in the order in which he himself wrote it; lest, namely, to almost every chapter of the Observations new and generally longer observations and elucidations would have to be subjoined. Nor yet even so shall I suffer his pains and labours to be fruitless. His instruments, especially those which have not been printed elsewhere, I shall produce where the place requires, as received from him; but his Observations, according to the subject matter, in the Commentary under his own name, in his own words, distinguished by a different type, and often more copiously than is usual, when the Works which we use exist in print elsewhere. Specimens I have already given in the preceding §, numbers 17 and 19, where I copied word for word whatever Chifflet has in chapter 16 of the Observations about the day of St. Simon's death, about his burial, mausoleum, epitaph, cult and relics; likewise in this §, number 22, where I reported the whole of chapter 1, with not a word either changed or omitted.

perhaps haud* (not)

in the manuscripts, better, the &* is absent

§ IV. St. Simon's parents, brother and sisters; his father's illustrious family, power, line of ancestors, dominions and dignities.

His parents, Of Simon's parents the biographer noted this: His father Ralph, most powerful in riches and in strength, and his mother was called Adela. Guibert, abbot of Nogent, whose words I quoted above, mentions only the father, count Ralph, likewise adding some things by which he commends his supreme power and illustrious family, namely Ralph's marriage with the widowed wife of king Henry, the mother of king Philip I. Alberic, monk of Trois-Fontaines, in his Chronicle at the year 1061 names both parents and one sister: Now count Ralph had left of his wife, who was called Adela, a son of good disposition named Simon, and a daughter named Alaida. The same at the year 1066 calls the father count Ralph of Crépy, stepfather of king Philip. William of Poitiers, a contemporary author, in the Deeds of William duke of the Normans and king of the English, treating of the assembly of Fécamp, likewise calls him the king's stepfather, and not obscurely intimates his pre-eminence among the Frankish nobles: There was present at this court the stepfather of the king of the Franks, Ralph, a most powerful count, and much of the nobility of France. This author Ordericus Vitalis copied here almost word for word in the Ecclesiastical History, book 4, referring that assembly to the year 1067. I pass over others who wrote that Ralph was a kinsman of king Philip, since talk of them will recur below.

[32] his brother and sisters from ancient charters More fully are we taught about Simon's parents and their offspring from the Charters which Chifflet appended to his Observations as arguments and testimonies for what he had said. Among these he produces from the original at St. Remigius of Reims a Writing of count Ralph concerning the things which he gave to St. Remigius for the soul of his son Walter, in which he speaks thus: Be it known to all the sons of the Catholic mother Church, both of the present time and of the future, that I, Ralph count of Crépy, had a son named Walter, whom I always loved with the greatest love, etc. Then, having reported the said son's slaying and his burial in the abbey of St. Remigius, he lists the goods and privileges which he assigned to that abbey for the salvation of his soul, and adds: But all this, as it has been said above, I so appoint and confirm and cause to be approved by Symon my son, and also by my two sons-in-law whom I have from my daughters; that is, by count Heribert; and by the most noble youth Bartholomew. Another charter Chifflet brings forward from the archive of Molesme, in which Simon institutes the anniversary day of his parents, namely of count Ralph and of Walter his brother and of his mother Adela, and also of the lord Symon himself after his death shall have occurred. The said charters will be of ampler use to us when we have come to the time at which they were written.

[33] are denoted. His father's illustrious lineage What has been brought forward so far leaves no doubt that Simon's father was Ralph (in others Rodulphus and Radulfus), count of Crépy; his mother Adela, his brother Walter or Walterius, and his sisters at least two, about whose names, marriages and offspring we shall afterwards hear Chifflet discoursing as far as will suffice here. Order requires that we first set forth what he has related about the stock of the parents. The second chapter of the Observations thus begins: Ralph, the father of St. Simon, count of the Vexin, of Crépy and of Bar-sur-Aube, had as father Ralph the elder, as grandfather Walter the second of that name, as great-grandfather Walter I, as great-great-grandfather Gualerannus; as great-great-grandmother Heldegardis, who had through her mother Adela, her grandfather Herbert count of Vermandois, another great-grandfather Herbert, a great-great-grandfather Bernard king of Italy, a great-great-great-grandfather Pepin the Hunchback, also king of Italy and son of Charlemagne, and as forefather of the sixth degree Charlemagne himself. But in what order and for what causes those three counties came to Ralph, the most renowned genealogist lord du Bouchet has accurately pursued in a historical Dissertation on the counts of the Vexin, which, written by him in French and transmitted to me, I have bound up with the Proofs. From it you will understand that the counts of the Vexin were the advocates of the royal monastery of Saint-Denis and the standard-bearers of the Oriflamme: and that in that office, as also in the possession of the county of the Vexin, the kings of the Franks themselves had them as predecessors.

[34] Lengthy is the said Dissertation of Bouchet, and it runs out into the deeds of the counts of the Vexin and of other princes (marriages, that is, quarrels, wars, and the genealogical series of his ancestors is exhibited, etc.) which happened long before our Saint and are so little connected with his Acts that, even if it had been drawn up in the Latin tongue, I should not judge it worth while to bind the whole of it into this Commentary. Wherefore I shall cull from it only those things by which what Chifflet promises may be understood. The prelude is this: The counts of the Vexin, the predecessors of holy Simon, seem to derive their origin from the same source as the royal family, through duke Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. Then the posterity of the said Childebrand is set out down to Waleran or Gualeran, count of the Vexin, who after the middle of the tenth century obtained the county of Amiens as well. To him succeeded his son Walter, the first of that name, count of the Vexin, of Amiens and of Meulan, standard-bearer of the Oriflamme of the Franks, who by his wife Eve, daughter of the count of Dreux, begot Walter II, Guy bishop of Soissons, Godfrey and Ralph; of whom the two last appear to have died without children.

[35] Walter the second, surnamed the White, count of the Vexin, with his dominions and dignities, of Amiens and of Meulan, obtained the county of Valois or of Crépy through his wife Adela, the only daughter of Bernard, count

of Senlis, sister of Heribert who died without offspring. Here I translate into Latin the few things which Bouchet inserts about the deeds of Walter the White, for the more convenient understanding of what follows: Helgaud in the Life of king Robert notes that, while that monarch reigned, Walter ordered the castle of Crépy to be built about the year DCCCCXCVIII. Some time after, he and his wife erected within the circuit of that new castle an abbey in honour of St. Arnulf the martyr, archbishop of Tours. I add Helgaud's words too, in Duchesne, volume 4 of the Writers of the History of France, page 74: The castle called Crispiacus, nobly built by the powerful Walter in the territory of Soissons, he, a noble man, rendered noble by the abbey of St. Arnulf made by him, and illustrious through the ages. Bouchet goes on to report other things bearing on the same, but which, lest I repeat the same thing, if I put his words into Latin, I take from the Latin instrument whence he himself learned them.

[36] which, besides the county of Crépy, That is extant in volume 10 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana among the Instruments of the church of Senlis, column 423, and is a public testimony by which Clarembald, bishop of Senlis, with many abbots, Priors, clerics and laymen subscribing, in the year 1117 approves and confirms the sentence passed for the monks of St. Arnulf against Ingelrannus, a knight, who contended that a certain Borough in the suburb of Crépy was of his own right. The monks therefore in the said testimony are brought in answering the adverse party thus: If your parents held anything in that borough, it was violence. For Walter, count of Amiens and at the same time of Crépy, with his most noble wife Adela, gave that among many other things to blessed Arnulf long ago, and caused the same to be confirmed by the assent of Robert, king of the Franks: and this Arnulf archbishop of Reims, Robert archbishop of Rouen, Leotherius archbishop of Sens, and several other bishops confirmed under anathema. And afterwards Pope John (who sat from the year MXXIV to MXXXIII) corroborated the same by the authority of his privilege; moreover the lord Pope Paschal in past years at Lagny-sur-Marne sanctioned it by the precept of his privilege. Thence it is clear not only that Walter and Adela enriched with many goods the monastery of St. Arnulf founded by them, but also that the same Walter, to whom, as has been said, Adela had brought as dowry the county of Valois, added to his remaining titles the title of count of Crépy. Now Crispeium, otherwise Crespeium, Crepiacum and Crispiacus, commonly Crespi or Crêpy-en-Valois, is a town, the capital of the district of Valois. And the district of Valois, otherwise Valesium or the district Valesius, to the inhabitants le Valois, is a tract in the Île-de-France, marked first with the title of a county and then of a duchy. But its counts, as Adrien de Valois rightly observes in the Notitia Galliarum, were called now counts of Valois from the district, now counts of Crépy from the district's capital. Now let us resume the genealogical series.

[37] came to him Walter II, surnamed the White, as Bouchet reports, left sons Drogo, Fulk, Guy and Ralph; and two daughters, Adela, to whom on her marriage the county of Meulan was assigned as dowry, and another whose name is unknown. To Drogo, the first of that name, his elder son, Walter transmitted the counties of the Vexin and of Amiens; Fulk was made bishop of Amiens, and after him Guy also, whom however I do not find in the Catalogues; but Ralph obtained the maternal inheritance, namely the county of Valois or of Crépy, and was thence called Ralph I, count of Crépy. He had as successor his elder son Ralph II, the father of St. Simon, to which Ralph II, on the death without children of Walter III, his kinsman, the son of Drogo I, count of the Vexin and of Amiens, there then devolved the counties of the Vexin and of Amiens with the dignity of Standard-bearer of the Oriflamme of the Franks. But in what way he came to the county of Bar will be seen when we treat of St. Simon's maternal stock.

[38] came. Adrien de la Morlière, canon of the cathedral church of Amiens, in the century last past published in print in French the Antiquities of Amiens, and inserted in them, at page 65 and following of the third edition of the year 1642, a genealogical table of the counts of Amiens, in which likewise Waleran, count of the Vexin, is said to have obtained the county of Amiens in the 10th century and to have transmitted it to his posterity in the same order down to Ralph II as in the Bouchet genealogy already set forth. It differs, however, in a few particulars; and first indeed in Adela, the wife of Walter the White, who in Bouchet above at number 35 is called the daughter of Bernard, count of Senlis, sister of Heribert who died without offspring, and whom de la Morlière makes the daughter of Heribert, count of Senlis, born of a younger son of the house of Vermandois (d'un puisné de Vermandois), heiress of the county of Crépy or Valois. The Morlière table differs secondly in the children of the same Walter the White, to whom it attributes only three sons, Drogo, Ralph and Falco, and a single unnamed daughter, countess of Meulan; whereas Bouchet enumerates four sons and two daughters, as was said in the preceding number.

[39] Which of them has marked it more rightly there is neither leisure nor is it worth while to inquire, There is added a description of certain places since in both the same direct line of St. Simon's paternal stock remains. A graver discrepancy will occur afterwards, and one to be corrected in its place in Morlière's table. It will be useful here, as above with the county of Crépy or Valois, to exhibit a brief account of the other places of which mention has already been made and will be made hereafter. The county of Senlis (le comté de Senlis) is thus described in Baudrand: A tract of Gaul in the province of the Île-de-France … between France proper and the tract of Valois, and the rivers Oise and Aisne, whose cities are Senlis and Compiègne. The territory of Vermandois (le Vermandois) thus: A tract of Gaul in the province of Picardy, marked with the title of an ancient county, between Thiérache on the East, Santerre on the West, the tract of Cambrai on the North and the province of the Île-de-France on the south. Of the territory of Amiens the same Baudrand relates this: It is a tract of Gaul in the province of Picardy, where once were the Ambiani, between Artois on the North, the tract of Santerre on the East, that of Beauvais on the South, and the county of Ponthieu on the West, and is so called from Amiens its chief city. But the district of the Vexin (le Vexin), in others Vulcassinus and Vexinum, was divided into two parts, the Eastern or French and the Western or Norman. The French part, or the French Vexin (le Vexin François), of which we treat here, is a tract of Gaul in the province of the Île-de-France between the rivers Oise and Epte, whose capital is Pontoise: as the same geographer has it.

[40] But it is to be noted besides that to the same French tract belong the towns illustrious with the title of a county, and an account of the dignity with which they were adorned, Meulan and Chaumont, and that hence it came about that St. Simon's ancestors were sometimes called counts of the Vexin, of Pontoise, of Meulan, of Chaumont. They were also sometimes called counts of Mantes (de Mante), of which town, situated in the Île-de-France and on the very border of the county of the Vexin, they had the lordship. But what Chifflet says, that the counts of the Vexin were standard-bearers of the Oriflamme, not only Bouchet, to whom we are referred, teaches, but the brothers Sainte-Marthe, Doublet, du Cange, and all others commonly affirm it who have mentioned the use of the Oriflamme or its standard-bearers. The Oriflamme, says du Cange in his Glossary, was the proper standard of the monastery of Saint-Denis in France, which the monks in the wars which they were compelled to undertake for the defence of their goods or privileges handed to their advocate to be borne, who, having received it from the abbot's hands, with certain prayers recited for that purpose by him, from the Saint's monument to which it was hung, bore it before them in battles as the standard-bearer of the church and monastery. For this was the first use of the Oriflamme.

[41] the Oriflamme of the Franks to be borne. After this he discourses about its material, colour, form and appellation, and continues thus: By that title, then, the counts of the Vexin or of Pontoise, who were the protectors and advocates of the monastery of Saint-Denis, perhaps because very many of its goods were situated within their dominion, bore the Oriflamme, which was the chief standard of that monastery, in the military expeditions which they undertook for their defence: which is the opinion of that most learned man André Duchesne in the History of Béthune, book I, chapter III. Doublet in the History of the abbey of Saint-Denis, page 301, the brothers Sainte-Marthe in volume 1 of the Genealogical History of the House of France, page 62, and others think that the right and privilege of bearing the Oriflamme belonged to the counts of the Vexin as the chief clients of St. Denis, which the instrument presently to be cited also intimates. Further, the custom of taking up the Oriflamme in the church of Saint-Denis and bearing it in the armies, at first restricted, as du Cange indicates, to wars for the defence of the monastery's goods, was afterwards extended to battles and expeditions of greater moment which the kings of the Franks undertook against their enemies, as is clear from various examples in Doublet, page 302, and in du Cange, Dissertation 18 on the History of St. Louis, page 249, where he disputes at length about the Oriflamme.

[42] an account. Among these is brought forward one of the year 1124, in which Louis VI, king of the French, about to war against the emperor Henry V, received the Oriflamme in the church of Saint-Denis as count of the Vexin. The instrument drawn up on this matter is extant in Doublet, page 853 and following, and altogether confirms what has been said about the right and privilege of the counts of the Vexin. For in it the said king Louis, whose father Philip I after the death of St. Simon had annexed that county to the kingdom, speaks thus: And so, the venerable abbot of the aforesaid church, Suger, being present, whom we held as faithful and intimate in our counsels, in the presence of our magnates we received, by the right of standard-bearer, as the counts of the Vexin were wont to do, keeping and imitating the ancient custom of our predecessors, the standard from the altar of the blessed ones (Denis and his companions), to which the county of the Vexin, which we hold from them in fee, is known to belong. These things I have judged should be treated a little more fully, because, since St. Simon on the death of his father Ralph held the Vexin and the other counties, there can be no doubt that the right and privilege of bearing the Oriflamme belonged to him too. But how great this dignity was, and in how great esteem it was held, you may understand from this, that after the county of the Vexin came to the kings of the Franks, that office was not committed to any noble man of the common run, but to him who surpassed the rest in merits, virtue, fortitude and warlike prudence, and that in the 15th century Arnoul, lord of Audrehem, supreme prefect of the French camps, commonly Marshal of France, and most acceptable to the king for his merits and virtue, laid down his prefecture in order to bear the Oriflamme. See more of these things in the authors mentioned.

§ V. The distinguished stock of St. Simon's mother; her marriage with Ralph, count of Crépy; the evident refutation of a divorce asserted by some.

The Saint's mother, whose ancestors The titles and dignities of his father's family having been set forth,

we proceed with Chifflet to such genealogical knowledge as there is of the maternal stock. To the words quoted at number 33 Chifflet presently adds: Ralph (Simon's father) had three wives in succession. The first was Adela, daughter of Nocherus, count of Bar-sur-Aube, granddaughter of Nocherus, count of Soissons, great-granddaughter of Achard, whom an old Charter, άνεπίγραφα, makes a Norman by family and the founder of La Ferté-sur-Aube, which from its contents it is permissible to entitle An account of the Lords of La Ferté, or of the Advocates of the Cell of La Ferté. That Charter commemorates four betrothed or husbands of Adela: Rainald of Semur; Rainard, count of Joigny; Rotgerius of Wangionis Ripa; and Ralph, whom it calls count of Chaumont in the Vexin. To this last alone Adela bore children, the sons Walter and Simon, and as many daughters, Adala, countess of Vermandois, and Alais or Adelaide, joined in marriage to Bartholomew, lord of Broyes, of whom more in chapters IV and V.

[44] Nothing beyond this about his mother's family, or about her four betrothed or husbands, does Chifflet relate; are assigned without doubt because, as he wished the few things he had given about Simon's paternal stock to be more fully understood from Bouchet's French Dissertation, so he thought what he here touched upon about the maternal stock could be sufficiently distinctly known both from the same Bouchet and from that Charter which he cites, likewise destined for his proofs. And indeed in both places these matters are treated more at length; but here too, for the sake of avoiding repetition, I shall transcribe only the Charter, which is drawn up in Latin and, if I am not mistaken, gave Bouchet his lead. This title is prefixed to it: The maternal genealogy of St. Simon the count, and this admonition of Chifflet is added: From the Charter concerning the Advocates of the Cell of La Ferté-sur-Aube, or an account of the lords of that place, which we copied from an old manuscript codex of St. Eugendus of the Jura. Then follows the Charter or Account itself: The founder of La Ferté was called Achard, and his wife Achardia: and they were Normans. From these Nocherus, count of Soissons, is related to have sprung: from whom another Nocherus, and also Wido a cleric, his brother, were born. This second Nocherus had two daughters, namely Comitissa (who was also Adelhida) and Isabel. But Isabel Walter of Clamecy took to wife and possessed half the whole honour: and he had by her a son named Ralph, who is related to have been strangled at La Ferté while still a youth.

[45] But Comitissa, who was the elder, had four husbands: and her marriage with Ralph Rainald of Semur, who died and had no children by her. After this Ralph, count of Chaumont in the Vexin, while he was journeying to Rome, passing by the castle of Bar, which was then situated on a hill, when he inquired whose that castle was, it was told him that this and certain other castles of the same region belonged to a certain young woman, who, long since bereaved of both parents, had also lost her husband in her adolescence. Hearing which, the count at once turned aside to her: and when she had pleased him, faith being given or received, he promised to take her to wife on his return. And since this displeased the chief men of that land, fearing namely his power and tyranny, taking counsel they resolved to hand her over to Rainard, count of Joigny: and so it was done. And when count Ralph, returning from Rome, learned this, he prepares to avenge the injury with arms.

[46] is set forth, For coming from France with a strong band of fighters, he took and destroyed the castle of Joigny; and finding the young woman there, namely his betrothed, he brought her back with him. And when he had meanwhile left her to be kept in the castle of La Ferté, wishing namely to know whether she had been got with child by count Rainard, the same men as before, namely his own men, handed the young woman over to Rotgerius of Wangionis Ripa. And when this was again announced to the count, returning with his men he utterly depopulated his land, giving all to the flames and consuming everything with plunderings and slaughters, until his own young woman should be given back to him. And then at last, the marriage being celebrated, he joined her to himself in wedlock: and by her he begot two sons, Walter and Symon, and one daughter, that is, Aaliz, whom Bartholomew, a youth of Broyes, took to wife, and by her begot Hugh Bardul. The few things that remain I do not transcribe, because they contain nothing to our purpose.

[47] she was lady and countess From that Charter we sufficiently understand how Simon's mother obtained the lordship of the county of Bar, the male stock of her ancestors being extinct, and after her death and that of his father Ralph, Simon himself: but it may be asked for what cause Nocherus or Nocherius, son of Achard and great-grandfather of Simon, is there called count of Soissons, and not likewise Nocherius II, his son and heir, or another of his descendants. Bouchet in his Dissertation supplies the reason to be gathered, in these words rendered from French into Latin: Nocherius I of that name (namely the son of Achard), count of Bar-sur-Aube, in the year DCCCCXCII took to wife Alais (Alix), countess of Soissons, daughter of count Gilbert, widow of Guy of Vermandois, and mother of Rainaud, count of Soissons, who died in the year MLVII … From the marriage of Nocherius and Alais were born Nocherius II, count of Bar, and Wido or Guy, a cleric. Of the counts of Soissons treat Duchesne in the History of the family of Châtillon, page 150 and following; the Sainte-Marthes, volume 1 of the Genealogical History of the house of France, page 376, and at length Claude Dormay in book 5 of the History of Soissons, and all lay down that Guy was count of Soissons under the kings Lothair and Hugh Capet, that is, in the waning of the 10th century, and assign to Guy as son and successor Rainaud, who died in the year 1057: but about Guy's wife and Rainaud's mother, or about her second marriage with Nocherius of Bar, they teach us nothing. Whether Bouchet dug these things out of ancient monuments is unascertained by me. But from the manner in which he arranges the matter it altogether follows that Nocherius I was called count of Soissons on no other ground than that he had married the widow of the count of Soissons and had governed that county for some time, perhaps because his stepson Rainaud was under age: and thus it is made clear why Nocherius's successors could be called counts only of Bar and not of Soissons.

[48] of Bar-sur-Aube, by name Adela, Now there is a threefold Barrum or Barium in the provinces of France: Bar-le-Duc, the chief city of the duchy of Bar on the confines of Lorraine and Champagne; Bar-sur-Seine, a town and county in the duchy of Burgundy; and Bar-sur-Aube, a town with a county in the province of Champagne, so called, says Baudrand, because it sits by the river Albula (otherwise Alba) at the foot of a hill in a most pleasant tract and in the district of Bassigny; but which formerly, according to the Charter just brought forward, was a castle situated on a hill. About four miles thence is distant La Ferté, surnamed, to distinguish it from several towns or castles of the same name, sur-Aube (la Ferté sur Aube), a town built by Achard in Champagne on the said river. The county of Bar, therefore, named in the third place, was brought as dowry to Ralph of Crépy (why he is called count of Chaumont in the Charter we have already explained) by the daughter of Nocherus of Bar, whom that same Charter calls Comitissa and Adelhida: Comitissa most probably because, since for defect of male offspring the county must devolve upon her, she was so more commonly named by her people, although in Baptism the name Adelhida or Adela had been given her, which is the same, and which at that period was most frequent especially in the more illustrious families, but was pronounced and written in different ways.

[49] According to Valois in the Notitia Galliarum at the word Firmitas, one and the same name are Adela, which is pronounced in different ways. It is uncertain in what year she married, Adala, Adelhaidis, Adalaïs. In the Trévoux Dictionary at the name Adelaide are added Adelheis and Adelis; but at the name Alizon, from the Latin-barbarous writers, Aleydis, Alays, Aëlis, Aleta; more are given by Simon de Peyronet in his Notes on the Catalogue of the Saints, page 454 and following, and he observes that those Latin names, however written, are commonly expressed in French by the word Alix. These things I have noted lest the reader stick fast if anywhere he finds the name of Adela, St. Simon's mother, otherwise expressed, as happened just now in the Charter. The year of the marriage entered into between Adela and Ralph, which has hitherto been determined by no one that I know, nor, I think, is easily to be determined, Bouchet lays down broadly in his French Dissertation, saying: Ralph, the second of that name, count of Crépy, of the Vexin, of Amiens, of Bar-sur-Aube and of Montdidier, standard-bearer of Saint-Denis, was a man among the most illustrious in the kingdom for power and wealth; before the year MXL he took to wife Adela, countess of Bar-sur-Aube. He brings forward no argument. That the marriage cannot, however, be fixed later is urged by the age of Hugh Bardul or Bardol, their grandson by their daughter, who, as Alberic testifies, invaded certain goods of his grandfather Ralph — who according to Bouchet died in the year 1074, according to Chifflet two years earlier — to the injury of his uncle Simon, the lawful heir, as we shall report in its place.

[50] For fixing the year of St. Simon's birth likewise no documents come to help. and bore Simon, the younger son, That he was younger than his brother Walter is certain to us from the instruments to be quoted, in which mention is made of both. For there, whether they are named or subscribe, Walter always goes first. Of the sisters it seems equally certain, since both had already been given in marriage about the year 1065, about which Walter was slain and his father Ralph, for his burial and the repose of his soul, enriched the abbey of St. Remigius of Reims with goods and privileges. The words of the instrument by which this is established I gave at number 32. Add from what was said before, that one of them, when Ralph the father ceased to live, had a son Hugh Bardul, advanced to such an age that, if Alberic is to be believed, he moved arms against Simon, who, as the biographer testifies, was then still a youth. Take the words: But when he (Simon) was bereaved of both parents, Philip, king of the Franks, moved by a spirit of malignity, eager to snatch away this man's inheritance to which he had succeeded by right, thinking that as a youth alone, without counsel, and without the help of parents, he could easily be overcome. Guibert of Nogent calls Simon a young lad when his father died.

[51] perhaps in the castle of Crépy. His mother had died Of the place of his birth Chifflet notes this: But St. Simon is believed to have been born in the old castle of the counts of Crépy, on whose site in our times a house has been built for Ursuline nuns, as I have ascertained from certain letters given me by them. That Crépy was a castle distinguished as the seat of its counts, Valois too writes in the Notitia Galliarum, on which single foundation, I think, it has been believed that St. Simon was born there; anything else I have certainly nowhere found. Further, according to what we have brought forward about the time and order of his birth, and what is now ascertained about his mother's death, he lost her while very young, more probably while still a boy or an infant. For that she was already

dead (I copy Chifflet) when in the year MLIII Ralph her husband, surviving her, granted the altar of Bonol to the church of St. Arnulf of Crépy, with the consent of Heddo, bishop of Soissons, in the first year of his episcopate: and Adela's death is noted in the Necrology of St. Eugendus of the Jura on the IV of the Ides of September, or the III, as another copy has it, and so it is read also in the charters of Molesme.

[52] in the year 1053, whence it is proved, What is asserted about Adela's death is proved from old Charters which d'Achery alleges in his Notes on the works of Guibert, and of which he exhibits a Summary as follows: Ralph, count of Crépy, formerly held several altars in benefice from the bishop of Soissons; but after the death of Adela his wife he obtains from Heddo, bishop of Soissons, that the church of St. Arnulf may hold perpetually and in its entirety the altar of Bonol (Bonneuil), which he held in benefice in his own person, etc. Then in a different type, perhaps because they are the very words of the instrument, is subjoined: Done at Soissons in the year of the Incarnation MLIII, the XIX of king Henry and the first of bishop Heddo. Most probably Ralph granted that altar — by which here the offerings or revenues of the church of the said place, or rather of the church, are designated — to the monastery of St. Arnulf, that the monks might pray God for the repose of the soul of his wife, buried in that same church of St. Arnulf.

[53] that she was not the one, as some relate, Destitute of these and other Charters, Duchesne in the History of the family of Châtillon, page 657 and following, the brothers Sainte-Marthe, volume 1 of the History of the House of France, page 456, and Adrien de la Morlière in the said Antiquities of Amiens, fell into a grave error. They attribute only two wives to Ralph: the first they call Alienor, and say that by her alone he begot children. The second they lay down to be queen Anne, and that in order to marry her, as Duchesne and the Sainte-Marthes add in express words, Ralph repudiated that first one, namely the mother of St. Simon. Mabillon in his preliminary Observations on the Life of Simon adopted their opinion (except that he calls Ralph's dismissed wife Adela) and declared it more fully. He first reports the words of Guibert of Nogent, where Ralph's power is commended chiefly from his marriage with the queen, and adds this: From these words of Guibert we learn that Ralph, the father of blessed Simon, is this Ralph, son of another Ralph, count of Crépy and of Vadium or Valois, who, having dismissed Adela, daughter of the count of Bar, his lawful wife, joined to himself in an adulterous union Anne, daughter of the king of Russia, widow of Henry, king of the French.

[54] dismissed by Ralph, Wherefore Adela, going to Rome, complained before Alexander II, the supreme Pontiff, that she had been despoiled of everything by her husband, and, a false charge of fornication being fastened upon her, had been expelled: which matter the Pontiff committed to Gervase, archbishop of Reims, and likewise to the archbishop of Sens and their suffragans to be examined, a letter being written on that matter, which is the twenty-fourth among the letters of that Pontiff in Labbe, volume IX of the Councils, column [ ]. But what those prelates judged in that matter is not clear from their letters. Gervase, however, in a letter which is found imperfect in Duchesne, volume IV of the History of the Franks, page 207, writes to Alexander that the kingdom of France is not a little disturbed, because the queen has married count Ralph, who had dismissed his own wife Adela with injury. The said letters of Pope Alexander and of archbishop Gervase are extant in the places assigned, and from them no doubt is left that Ralph, in order to obtain the marriage of queen Anne, dismissed his own wife, a charge of fornication being deceitfully objected to her, as she herself complained before the Pontiff at Rome; but from those same letters it is in no way elicited what was the name of the woman dismissed, or what her family or lineage.

[55] That she was not Adela, countess of Bar, and therefore that upon her, the mother of St. Simon, no suspicion of a crime, whether truly or falsely fastened on her, ought to fall, but another, his second wife, by name Eleonora, is clear from this, that Adela had departed this life in the year 1053; whereas Henry, king of the French, the first of that name, died only in the year 1060, before which Ralph certainly could not contrive a marriage with the queen, and to that end repudiate a wife. I pass over the fact that Alexander II, raised to the chair of St. Peter in the year 1061, in his letter does not speak of Ralph's marriage with the queen as already contracted, but only as to be contracted. Bouchet in his manuscript French Dissertation affirms that the woman dismissed was Eleonora, the only daughter and heiress of Manasses, count of Montdidier, whom Ralph had married in the year 1054, immediately following the death of Adela of Bar. The same Chifflet brings forward in his Observations, writing thus: The second wife of count Ralph was Eleonora, or Alienordis: for so Duchesne, Sainte-Marthe and Adrien de la Morlière name her, although wrongly confusing her with Adela, Ralph's first wife. To these he subjoins the history of Eleonora's repudiation in almost the same manner as Mabillon above, and adds: Eleonora was the daughter and heiress of Manasses, count of Montdidier, on whose account Ralph, joined to her in marriage, is read to be called count of Montdidier by Ordericus, book VII, at the year MLIV, page 639, and again page 657, as we have been given a foretaste from the not yet published Commentary of that learned man lord du Cange on the Counts of Amiens.

[56] The said Commentary of du Cange is not at hand, that we might learn perhaps lady of Montdidier. whether what is here asserted about Eleonora, countess of Montdidier, Ralph's second wife, rests on documents, or was formed only by conjecture from the texts of Ordericus Vitalis calling Ralph count of Montdidier. Montdidier, to the natives Mondidier, Ralph did indeed hold, but, as our biographer testifies, snatched by force from its possessor. Take the words: Grieving for his father (Ralph), now dead — since he remembered that while he still lived he had … snatched by force from its possessor a certain castle which he had prepared as a place of burial for himself, and had held it as his own — (Simon) consulted the Roman Pontiff as to what he should do about this … But the Pope … took care to command that he be taken away entirely from the place which he had unjustly carried off. Simon is said to have obeyed; the body to have been removed thence and translated to the church of St. Arnulf at Crépy. But that the place of Ralph's first burial was Montdidier, St. Simon testifies in the Charter for the church of Crépy. Let him himself be heard: I, Simon, by the grace of God count … caused Ralph my father to be brought from Montdidier, where he had already lain for three years after the dissolution of his body, and gave him back to the church of St. Arnulf, which … is founded in the castle of Crépy … in which also he had been reborn of water and of the Holy Spirit; and there … I caused him to be placed. It would be wicked to doubt whether the same Simon restored Montdidier to him to whom he owed it; but whether to his stepmother, to whom his father had not given it back when he repudiated her, or to her heirs, or to another true lord of it, is not sufficiently proved.

§ VI. The Saint's education after his mother's death; his father Ralph's divorce from his second wife; his third marriage with the widowed queen, his kinswoman; his excommunication, probably removed after some time.

[The Saint, his mother being dead, is brought up at the court of the duke of Normandy;] Simon's deeds in boyhood and adolescence are unknown to us; this one thing we know, that he was brought up at the court of William the Conqueror, then duke of Normandy, afterwards king of England. This the biographer expressly affirms, not indeed in its own place, but where he treats of the daughter of that same king William offered to Simon in marriage, saying: To Simon … the most powerful king of England, William by name, who had reared him, sent word to come to him with speed. And a little after, when the king offers him his daughter and says, I have long known by experience your fidelity and love, and my own nursling, he brings in Simon answering thus: Great and manifest is the benefit which you bestowed upon my boyhood, etc. The same the author repeats where he narrates the journey of Simon, then already a monk, into Normandy, as follows: He hastened as far as Normandy for the sake of visiting the king and queen of the English, who had reared him. Now there was between Simon and queen Matilda, daughter of Baldwin of Lille, count of Flanders, some connexion of blood, to be explained more fully hereafter, and therefore most probably she undertook the care of him and wished him to be brought to her court, as soon as the Boy had lost his mother Adela about the year 1053, or his father Ralph in the following year had passed to a second marriage.

[58] Ralph the father takes as wife Anne, king Henry's It is not ascertained how long Simon lived at the said court, yet a notable time is suggested by the words of king William reported by the biographer: I have long known by experience your fidelity and love: so that it is altogether likely that he was living there even at the time when Ralph his father, having repudiated, as we saw above, his second wife, Simon's stepmother, married a third, about whom Chifflet gathered this in his manuscript Observations: His third wife therefore was Anne, daughter of Yaroslav, king of the Russians, widow of Henry I, king of the French: whom he seems to have married in the year MLXI, the year of the widowed queen's mourning being completed. But on account of this marriage Ralph was interdicted from the sacraments. For thus says Clarius the monk in the Chronicle of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif of Sens: "But when king Henry died at the castle of Vitry in Brie and was buried in the basilica of Saint-Denis, count Ralph, a kinsman of that same king, took his wife in marriage against right and divine law; whence he was excommunicated. But Baldwin, count of Flanders, reared the little king Philip and governed France." Namely, Ralph had married Anne in a degree of affinity then forbidden by ecclesiastical law. For, as is known, before the Lateran council in the year MCCXV under Innocent III, marriages within seven degrees, whether of consanguinity or of affinity, were forbidden: and Ralph was a kinsman of king Henry in the fifth degree; and so was related to queen Anne in the same degree of affinity, as appears in this scheme:

Herbert I, count of Vermandois.

Nevertheless count Ralph is read in William of Poitiers, in the Deeds of William, duke of the Normans and king of the English, to have been present at the assembly of Fécamp in the year MLXVII. Here he inserts the words of William of Poitiers and of Ordericus Vitalis in which Ralph is called stepfather of king Philip, but which we gave above at number 31, and continues thus: That Ralph lived until the year MLXXII we shall show below in chapter IX, but of this marriage and of queen Anne we must now treat more fully.

[60] Those fuller matters, as being less connected with the deeds of our Saint, having dismissed his second wife: and besides resting here and there on conjectures only, we shall pass over; nevertheless, that the reader may have some series of the history, we shall substitute for them the few things which Bouchet noted on that matter in the French Dissertation mentioned several times. It is not known, he says, what was decreed about the divorce of Ralph and his wife, or what became of her; we learn only from the fragment of the answer which the archbishop of Reims sent to the Pontiff that she was unjustly repudiated, and that the marriage of the queen with the count

was stirring up the greatest disturbances in the kingdom. And in truth Baldwin V, count of Flanders, administrator of the kingdom, fearing lest, while the king was under age, Ralph should think of usurping the royal authority, took up arms and snatched from him Vitry, which belonged to him and was a notable castle on the confines of Champagne.

[61] It must be confessed that it is not absolutely known what was determined about the divorce, hence disturbances and his excommunication; especially because Clarius, without mentioning the divorce, seems to ascribe the cause of the excommunication pronounced against Ralph to a marriage contracted with the impediment of consanguinity or affinity. Nor shall I deny that Eleonora was unjustly repudiated; but this I certainly do not learn from the letter of Gervase, archbishop of Reims, whose Fragment alleged by Bouchet is this: To his lord and Father Alexander, Pontiff of the holy Apostolic See, Gervase, by the grace of God archbishop of Reims, wishes to govern the Church of God diligently amid the waves of this world, and to arrive happily at the harbour of eternal blessedness. Our kingdom is not a little disturbed. For our queen has married count Ralph; which deed our king grieves over exceedingly, but his guardians do not take it equally hard. For which cause no small sorrow has affected me also; since I have not this time the opportunity of accomplishing what I had proposed with ardent desire. For I had proposed to visit the thresholds of Peter, to see your long-desired face, to receive your holy and honeyed discourse from your mouth in person, and for some time to serve the interests of the holy Apostolic See so far as in me lies. Which things if it is not now permitted me to do (for the disturbance of the kingdom, as I said, detains me), when opportunity is given I shall do them the more zealously the longer I have desired to do them. But about the wife of count Ralph, who complained to your Paternity that she was dismissed by her husband with injury, we wish this to be known to you … The rest is missing, both in our manuscript copy, which Chifflet had placed among his proofs, and in Duchesne, volume 4 of the Writers of the History of the Franks, page 207.

[62] but these were extinguished From the alleged fragment of the letter, then, we do indeed learn that Ralph's wife complained to the Pontiff that she had been dismissed by her husband with injury; but not that her complaints rested on truth and were proved: whatever be the case, it is nowhere read that Ralph took back the dismissed Eleonora; on the contrary the author of a fragment of French History, which Duchesne published in volume 4 of the Writers, not obscurely indicates that he clung to queen Anne until death, saying at page 88: Queen Anne received count Ralph in marriage; and when he died she sought again her native soil. Nay, it seems that not so long after Ralph's marriage with Anne all things flowed peacefully enough, at least at court; since Ralph afterwards appeared honourably with the king among the nobles and prelates and subscribed acts. I adduce one example of the year 1065, because from it we are at the same time taught that at least then our Simon had returned from Normandy to his father.

[63] and these, as it seems, The instrument Mabillon gives in volume 4 of the Benedictine Annals, page 755, about an assembly of the kingdom held at Corbie, taken from the archive of Corbie, and running thus: The names of the bishops, of the magnates of the kingdom, and of the noble men who were present at Corbie when Philip I, king of the Franks, confirmed the ancient immunities and possessions of the monastery of Hasnon given by Baldwin, son of Baldwin count of Flanders, the restorer of the said place, and exempted them from the right of the fisc and of escheat, at the request of both Baldwins. There are presently subjoined the subscriptions of those who were present: first of Gervase, archbishop of Reims, and of three bishops, of Noyon, of Amiens, of Beauvais, and of the abbot of Corbie: then of thirty-two magnates of the kingdom and noble men, and indeed next after the subscriptions of the two Baldwins there is appended the subscription of Ralph and of both his sons in these characters: Sign of Ralph the count. Sign of Walter his son and of Simon his brother. Finally the series of subscribers is closed with this note of time: Done at Corbie in the basilica of blessed Peter the apostle in the year from the Lord's Incarnation MLXV, Indiction III, epact XI, in the sixth year of the reign of king Philip, in the XVII year of the episcopate of Lietbert of Cambrai.

[64] The subscriptions in exactly the same order and number, and with the same closing clause or note of time, Duchesne too had given from the archive of the abbey of St. Peter of Hasnon among the instruments for the History of the house of Béthune, pages 8 and following; were shortly removed. but afterwards Denis de Sainte-Marthe in volume 3 of the enlarged Gallia Christiana printed the complete Acts of the assembly: namely the Charters of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and of king Philip on the restoration of the monastery of Hasnon, from the original itself. And both Charters have the same subscriptions with the closing clause appended, as may be seen in the said volume among the instruments, columns 84 and following. Let it meanwhile be permitted here to observe that from those Acts of the assembly there arises a foundation, in my judgment not to be despised, for thinking, not only that the disturbances which Ralph's marriage with the queen had earlier stirred up in the kingdom and at court were settled or lulled, as I hinted, but also that at that time Ralph had been absolved from the excommunication, whether the death of Eleonora, which perhaps followed not long after the complaints laid before the Pontiff, or some other intervening cause made the matter easier. For my part I cannot sufficiently persuade myself that archbishop Gervase, to whom the judgment upon the divorce had been committed by the supreme Pontiff, and the other bishops, would have wished to be present at the assembly and to subscribe their acts along with a man then still publicly cut off from the communion of the faithful. Hence much less shall I assent to the opinion of those who, as Mabillon reports, say that Ralph died under excommunication, until there be produced an express and evident testimony of an ancient and trustworthy author; such as I have not hitherto seen. The opposite is urged by the benefits which he conferred on monasteries, and the pious works which he instituted for the salvation of his soul and of his heirs, at times later than his excommunication: as I shall show in the following §.

§ VII. Ralph's benefactions made to monasteries, with the approval of his son St. Simon; the death of his brother Walter.

The Saint subscribes his father's letters for the abbey of Der; Among the benefactions conferred on various monasteries by Ralph, St. Simon's father, after he had been absolved from the excommunication, as I thought just now, are probably to be numbered those contained in the Cartulary of Der, cited in the old and the new Gallia Christiana, where the abbots of Der are treated. That I transfer hither entire, as Chifflet, having received it from Nicolas Camuzat, appended it to his manuscript Proofs, because it pertains to our Saint too: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I, count Ralph, and the abbot of St. Peter and St. Berchar named Wandelger, who is surnamed Bruno, and the whole congregation of that place, had a dispute about a certain wood which is situated above the village named Losa: which desiring to appease, I let go the very part which I held and gave it to the aforesaid place: I and my heirs, namely my sons Walter and Simon, on this agreement, that every week on the second feria a Mass be celebrated for my salvation and that of my other heirs, and that one poor man have food and a prebend perpetually in that same monastery. And that this my donation may remain firm for all time, I have confirmed it with my hand, and my son Walter, and Simon and my other heirs. S. of Ralph the count. S. of Walter his son. S. of Simon his son. S. of Wido. S. of Ansculf. S. of Milo. S. of Roger. S. of Drogo. S. of Walter. This Charter is marked with no chronological note; yet since I have found Simon nowhere appearing or subscribing acts before the year 1065, I therefore said that the benefactions contained in it are probably later than Ralph's excommunication. The same must have seemed so to Mabillon, who in volume 5 of the Annals refers them to the year 1072.

[66] likewise to others, to which, for his son Walter's But certainly later is the donation which Ralph made to the monastery of St. Remigius at Reims for the burial and the repose of the soul of his son Walter, lately slain. The letters, from the original at St. Remigius of Reims, Chifflet left us in his manuscript Proofs, and the same William Marlot made public in volume 2 of the History of the Metropolis of Reims, page 131, alleging various reasons, and among them that they bear the name and seal of Simon, the renowned offspring of the aforesaid Ralph, reckoned among the Saints. For this cause, and because Simon afterwards increased the donation, the letters demand a place here also. Be it known to all the sons of the Catholic mother Church, both of the present time and of the future, that I, Ralph count of Crépy, had a son named Walter, whom I always loved with the greatest love, more than all my children whom God has deigned to give me. But it happened that my lord Philip, king of the Franks, led an expedition of his cavalry to recover the castle of Vitry: at which expedition I and my aforesaid son Walter were present with the princes of the kingdom.

[67] lately slain, burial and soul's repose But that same son of mine Walter, since he was of great spirit and always wholly given to warfare, was then slain in the fealty and service of his lord Philip, king of the Franks, not far from the city of Reims. But I, considering that the blessed confessor Remigius converted our people (that is, the nation of the Franks) to God, and that he will present it [] on the day of judgment before the sight of the almighty Lord: and at the same time thinking that my son, while he lived, had somewhat disturbed the property of that same Saint: and that I have always loved and venerated with the greatest honour that place where the venerable body of the aforesaid Saint rests — considering all these causes with myself, I caused the lifeless body of my son to be carried to his most sacred [] church. And for all the things in which my son had sinned against that same Saint, I made satisfaction to God and to the blessed confessor Remigius in person: and so commending the soul and body of my son to his holy prayers, I caused him to be buried in his [*] cemetery, that is, in the cloister of his monks; that he might intercede for his soul and on the day of judgment be his leader and advocate before God, to whose mercy alone I have brought him and in the hand of whose loving-kindness I have left him.

[68] the same father For this matter therefore I, Ralph the count, taking of my men-servants and maid-servants whom I had about my castle of Bussy, handed them over to the most blessed Remigius, apostle of the Franks, with all their lands and houses, with their sons and daughters, and with all their substance: so that all the customs and all the service which they owed to me and to my castle and to my officers I altogether remit to them, that they may serve blessed Remigius alone and his monks. Therefore let no person, no man whatever, cleric or layman, slave or free, exercise any power over them or over their land, or have or demand any custom there, great or small, but only blessed

Remigius and his monks. And as I held them in my free power without the contradiction of anyone, and their lands and all that they had, so all that I had in them I have handed over to blessed Remigius, that without the contradiction of anyone he may have, hold and possess the whole in his free power, and that no one else may claim or demand anything there.

[69] If a thief is found there, let the officer of St. Remigius take him: the goods of the abbey of St. Remigius if he takes refuge there, let no one drag him thence, but let the officer of St. Remigius take and bind him, and let no one else but the man of St. Remigius do this. If a judicial combat happen there, let the monk or officer of the Saint conduct him wherever he will, if he will, to the court of Auxor, or to Reims to St. Remigius, or in the same land. But if he shall conduct him to Bussy, the officers of the castle shall help him in good faith; but so that they have not thence the price of a single denarius. But all this, as has been said above, I so appoint and confirm, and cause to be approved by Symon my son; and also by my two sons-in-law whom I have from my daughters, that is, by count Heribert and by the most noble youth Bartholomew: and besides by my knights of Bussy, that is, Odelric, Wido and Boso his brother [*]: and also another Boso the son of Wido, and Warinus with his sons: and also my officers whom I have in that castle, that is, Andrew and all the rest, both free men and serfs.

[70] All this therefore I did for the soul of my beloved son Walter, at Reims and for the remission of my sins, and for the souls of all my kindred: which also I will to be firm and stable unto everlasting. But whoever shall infringe or destroy [*] it, let him incur the wrath of God and become a stranger to his kingdom. Now this largess was made in the church of blessed Remigius before his body, when there were present many bishops and counts and other noble men, whom the king's presence had gathered there. I willed therefore and asked that the monks should write in this same Charter the names of the men-servants and maid-servants whom I had given, and to what uses of the church they wished to turn them; that they might be certain what I had bestowed on blessed Remigius for my son's soul, and that I might know what they were going to do with my alms.

[71] It has pleased the lord abbot Herimar and all our brethren, of blessed Remigius, the monks of blessed Remigius, that the alms which the count offered to blessed Remigius for the soul of his son Walter should from now unto eternity pertain to the service of the sick brethren, and serve the uses of those alone who according to the precept of St. Benedict remain in the cell of the sick for their recovery. And this is appointed, that no abbot, no provost, no person whatever may dare at any time to infringe or change it: but whatever shall come from the aforesaid alms, however little it may increase, shall, as has been ordained, serve only the sick brethren; and let nothing thence be turned to any other office; but let it pertain wholly to the cell of the sick and remain there. Whoever shall do otherwise, let him incur the wrath of God.

[72] and privileges And these are the names of the men-servants and maid-servants: Artald, Tegisus, Martin, Jordan, Evrard, Albric, Flohard, Mainard, Ermoin, Guntran, Harduin, Henry, Heribert, John, Wido, Odo; likewise Ermoin, whom a certain knight held of the count, yet so that he received only the poll-tax from him: but the count had all the rest from him; that is, three pleas in the year, his house, his lands, his sons and daughters. The count therefore gave us everything concerning him, except the poll-tax alone, and for that tax he gave Henry — not the one already named but another — that he might pay us the tax of his head, not only the pleas. Likewise he gave us of Anseysus the whole allod, houses, lands and everything, except only the poll-tax which the aforesaid knight held. And these are the women without husbands whom he gave us: Usuina with her sons, Gislendis, Gisla, Hildegardis. All these, as has been said, he gave with their lands and houses and sons and daughters and all their substance. Thus far from the original in Chifflet's proofs: in Marlot for brevity's sake some things here and there are omitted, and different words occur, the chief of which I have noted in the margin. For the rest, I would have the reader recall what I observed above, and judge whether it is likely that a man would have spoken in the manner in which Ralph here spoke in the church before the bishops, who was not only at that very time cut off from the assembly of the faithful, but so contumacious and careless of the salvation of his soul as to have persevered in the same state until death.

[73] granted; To that Charter too no note of time is added, but that it is later than the assembly celebrated at Corbie in the year 1065 there is no need for me to point out, since Walter subscribed its Acts. The day of his death Chifflet marks in the copy of the Charter: On the Nones of September died Walter, from the Necrology and the book of anniversaries of St. Remigius of Reims; but he adds: Yet from the Molesme Charter his brother count Simon appoints his brother Walter's anniversary on the following day, namely the VIII of the Ides of September. The same author in the Observations, in the whole of chapter 3, inquires into the year of the death of the same Walter, and at last fixes the year 1065, the same, namely, in which the assembly of Corbie was held, but from conjecture only, which, he says, I willingly submit to the judgment of the prudent reader. Bouchet in his manuscript French Dissertation defers Walter's death to the year 1068; but since he alleges no authority, I do not doubt that he too used the help of conjectures. It matters little to our plan which of them conjectured more truly, especially since afterwards mention of our Saint occurs only in one place until the death of his parent Ralph, and therefore I let their arguments pass.

[74] to a donation made also to the church of Amiens, That mention occurs in a Charter of Ralph for the church of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Firminus the martyr at Amiens, which Morlière, citing it in the Antiquities of Amiens, page 64 and at the end of the Work, page 432, testifies was drawn up in the year 1069, and quotes at page 73. To it, as beautifully elucidating and confirming certain things asserted above, we give a place here too: Since I, Ralph, by the divine Clemency count of Amiens, in pursuing the glory of secular dignity remembered that I was burdened with a great load of sins, I resolved to hand over to the church of the holy Mother of God Mary and of the most blessed martyr Firminus, and to the brethren established there, certain of those things which were of my right, that by their intervention I might be able to obtain the pardon of my sins: but because out of the many things which I possessed it seemed to bishop Guy most useful to relax the power which the viscounts exercised in the lands of the aforesaid brethren, at his entreaty and by his favour I granted to them to have by perpetual right whatever of this kind pertaining to the castle of Conty I and the knights of the whole honour of Conty held anywhere in their lands or villages. And that the grant of this donation might remain firm and indissoluble, Simon my son, and Walter, the son of Walter Tirel, gave their voluntary assent to this writing: and the said knights, approving the same, received elsewhere, by my bestowal, equivalent benefices for what they lost. This charter was written by my hand, and by that of my wife Anne, etc.

[75] The editor suppressed the subscriptions of very many witnesses: but, with Anne, Ralph's wife, present; whence are confirmed what suffices for us, the last words clearly indicate that queen Anne was present at the donation, whom Ralph without any hesitation calls his wife. Hence there is somewhat weakened the opinion of Chifflet, who, when he had probably not consulted that Charter, judged in his manuscript Observations from mere conjecture that queen Anne, because her marriage with Ralph was condemned, withdrew herself from living with him in the year 1065 or 1066, and then turned her mind to building and endowing the church of St. Vincent the martyr at Senlis. The text from the fragment of the History of France reported at number 62, together with the words now given and the silence of the ancient writers about that withdrawal of Anne from Ralph, make it more likely to me that they remained together until Ralph's death; but also that a way was found by which both the disturbances stirred up by the marriage were quieted and the excommunication removed.

[76] Then, I think, Ralph also granted goods and immunities to various churches, certain of the things said before and the queen turned her mind to building and endowing the abbey of St. Vincent at Senlis. Queen Anne's diploma on this foundation you may see, if you please, in the old Gallia Christiana, volume 4, page 949 and following, and in the new, volume 10, among the instruments, column 204. The note of time being lacking, in both places the year 1059 is noted in the margin, but wrongly, as Chifflet rightly observes, since it was subscribed by queen Bertha, wife of king Philip, who in the year 1059 was a boy of only seven or eight years. More probably therefore, as the same author adds, it was drawn up in the year MLXVIII or MLXIX, in which last year king Philip, in the ninth year of his reign, added to the church already established a privilege of liberty at the prayers of his mother Anne. King Philip's diploma is likewise extant in the old and the new Gallia Christiana.

Marlot, eum*

ibid. sanctissimam*

ibid. cœmeterio*

ibid. fratremque*

ibid. destruxit*

§ VIII. Ralph's death; Simon's war with king Philip, and, according to some, with Hugh Bardulf, his sister's son.

Chifflet fixes Ralph's death in the year 1072; Authors do not agree about the year in which Ralph, dying, transmitted his truly ample possessions and titles of dignities to Simon, then his only son. Not to be heard are Labbe in the Genealogical Tables, page 43, and Duchesne in the History of the family of Châtillon, page 658, who assign Ralph's death to the year 1066; for documents afterwards found overturn their opinion. There remain two chief opinions, namely Chifflet's, who defers the said death to the year 1072, and Bouchet's, to 1074. Chifflet sets forth his own in a few words in the Observations, chapter 9. First, which is today readily admitted, he contends that it cannot be fixed before the year 1072, then continues thus: But that Ralph did not prolong his life beyond February of the year MLXXII (for the Molesme charters mark the VIII of the Kalends of March) is shown from this, that on his death Simon his son was harassed for nearly three years by war from king Philip, from the Life of St. Simon by a contemporary author, and at last, peace being established between them, Simon received back Vitry and his other property from the hand of king Philip in the year MLXXV, to which year the restitution of Vitry is noted in the Chronicles of St. Peter of Châlons and of Alberic.

[78] Bouchet and others, 1074: It is true that at the said year there is noted in those Chronicles The restitution of Vitry, and that in Alberic the peace between Simon and king Philip is bound to the same; if this be right, it altogether follows that Ralph did not live beyond the year 1072; since, as the biographer testifies, Simon was involved in military labour for nearly three years. But first Bouchet must be heard, likewise setting forth and proving his opinion in a few words: It is certain that he (Ralph) died only on the XXII of February of the year MLXXIV, as two Charters of count Simon, his son and heir, testify; the one in favour of Robert, abbot of Molesme, where his death is noted on the VIII of the Kalends of March, … the other for the abbey of St. Arnulf of Crépy, given on the XI of the Kalends of April or the XXII of March of the year MLXXVII, which has it that Ralph had already been dead three years when Simon ordered his body to be transferred from Montdidier to Crépy. Of this second Charter, which with the former I shall give entire hereafter, no one hitherto whom I know has attempted to weaken the authority, so accurate are all its chronological characters acknowledged to be. From the same Charter Marlot too attaches Ralph's death to the year 1074; but Mabillon in his preliminary Observations, having commended the Charter's authority from its characters agreeing excellently with the year 1077, goes further, saying: Nay, there Simon says that he transferred his father's body only after a triennium had elapsed from his death, which agrees with that same year MLXXVII; since ALL assign Ralph's death to the year MLXXIV. Who are those "all," ancients or moderns? If ancients, it had been worth while to name one or another: if moderns, Duchesne and Labbe might at least have been excepted, in the places cited above.

[79] But, passing these by, I cannot but wonder why Chifflet, who had Bouchet's manuscript French Dissertation and indeed destined it for the press to be bound up with his own Proofs together with the said Charter we, having considered both Simon's Charter, which Bouchet had copied from the archive of Crépy — why, I say, Chifflet in his Observations set down nothing in answer to Bouchet's opinion, so opposed to his own and, as the same Bouchet thought, certain. Chifflet cites the Charter in chapter 9, where he treats of the translation of Ralph's body, and thinks it was drawn up a few days before Simon bade farewell to the world, but he does not touch by a single word on Bouchet's opinion. What the reason was I do not know; but to me that opinion is not so certain as it seemed to Bouchet and others. I bring forward my reason. The author of the Life mentions the translation, and on that account Simon benefits the monastery of St. Arnulf; it is subscribed by king Philip, with whom he had war. And so it is easy to think that at one time, namely while the war lasted, the body was translated which had already lain three years at Montdidier, and at another, namely when peace had been made with Philip, the Charter of donation was drawn up, which the king would not seem likely to have subscribed while the war lasted.

[80] That explanation the Charter itself does not refuse, which I append: by which he says his father's body was translated three years In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Everyone who understands himself knows that man consists of two natures, namely a rational soul and a body. Wherefore it seems most salutary to provide worthily for each part what is its own. And because it is just to think about the resurrection, it is very necessary to make offering for sins: whence blessed Augustine says that the souls of the departed can be relieved by the piety of their living kin. Wherefore I, Simon, by the grace of God count, taking precaution for the future for the salvation of my soul, and indeed of my father's, the venerable count Ralph, seeing that the days of the present life are nothing, and fixing my mind so far as I can on the consideration of eternity, have caused the aforesaid Ralph my father to be brought [*] from Montdidier, where he had already lain for three years after the dissolution of his body, and have given him back to the church of St. Arnulf, which was founded by him and by his predecessors in the castle of Crépy with honourable design, in which also he had been reborn of water and of the Holy Spirit: and there, after the manner of the ancients, beside the tomb of my mother, his wife, and also of our predecessors, with psalms and prayers I caused him to be placed in the double cave.

[81] And that we may the better have that same archbishop and martyr, after his death, and benefits the monastery namely blessed Arnulf, as intercessor with God for our souls, I grant to that church by a golden ring the whole land of Bonoculum [], which I have hitherto held in demesne, with the serfs and all its appurtenances. But on this tenor, that in my lifetime I have half of that land and the church likewise: but after my death let the whole belong to the church. I give also to that same church two very precious candlesticks, that through the merits of the holy martyr eternal light may possess my father's soul. And this [] I give and willingly grant, and confirm with my own hand, and ask that this little Charter be strengthened by the hands of others. But if anyone (which I do not believe will happen) of my heirs shall bring any calumnious claim against this donation, let his suit have no effect; but let him incur the wrath of almighty God with Simon Magus and Judas Iscariot, and also Dathan and Abiram: but whoever shall administer it well, let him become a partaker of that alms.

[82] of St. Arnulf of Crépy, This was done in the castle of Crépy on the XI of the Kalends of April, in the year of the Incarnate Word MLXXVII, Indiction XV, Epact XXIII, concurrent the sixth, and in the XVIII year of the reign of Philip, king of the Franks. Sign of Philip, king of the Franks. So has our manuscript copy, with which the Mabillon edition in the preliminary Observations on the Life of Simon agrees: except, however, a difference of a few words, indicated in the margin, and the number of the years of king Philip's reign, which is omitted in Mabillon. But now attend, I pray, to both parts of the Charter: you will see that in the former, which is inserted at number 80, everything is expressed in the past tense, or that those things are narrated which had been done; in the other, which number 81 comprises, everything in the present, that is, those things are indicated which are being done now. You will see, I say, that the whole Charter can be fitted to the explanation given before, and therefore that, although the Charter was written in the year 1077, it does not thence certainly follow that Ralph did not die before the year 1074.

[83] and the words of the biographer and of Alberic, Someone will say: Simon was engaged in military labour for nearly three years only, according to the biographer: according to the Charter, Ralph's body, when it was translated, had already lain three years at Montdidier; either therefore the biographer is mistaken in placing the translation during the war and extending this to a triennium only, or the Charter exaggerates in deferring the translation three years from the death. I answer that neither must be said, unless it be proved that the beginning of the war must be taken from Ralph's very death, which the objected difficulty involves; but the opposite of this we gather from the biographer, when he says: But when he (Simon) was bereaved of both parents, Philip, king of the Franks, moved by a spirit of malignity, eager to snatch away this man's inheritance to which he had succeeded by right, thinking that as a youth alone, without counsel and without the help of parents, he could easily be overcome: HE FIRST CONTRIVES TO ATTACK HIM WITH SNARES, then in open war [*] stirs up a tempest. Do you see that between Ralph's death and the beginning of the war some time passed, which Philip spent in snares? But of what kind? Perhaps persuasions, specious pretexts, promises, entreaties, flatteries, by which he might lead the Youth's mind to yield at least some part of the inheritance; until at last, effecting nothing thus, he turned to open force and arms.

[84] we adhere to Chifflet. And so, since on Bouchet's opinion, which fixes Ralph's death in the year 1074, we must abandon (1) the authority of Alberic, who, relying on another older Chronicle, attached the peace to the year 1075, although the war lasted for nearly three years; (2) that of our biographer, who indicates that the translation was made during the war, which cannot be understood on that opinion — this opinion not only does not seem to me certain, but less probable than Chifflet's, in which Alberic and the biographer can easily be reconciled with the Charter, explained in the way I have said. Let us lay down Ralph's death on the XXII day of February in the year 1072, the year's beginning being taken either from the Nativity or from the Circumcision of the Lord; let us lay down the beginning of the war at the expiring of the same year, the translation of the body in the month of March of the year 1075, and the peace at the end of the same year. It will be true that the translation was made during the war, as the biographer indicates; true that the body had then lain at Montdidier for three years, as the Charter testifies; true that peace was made in the year 1075, as Alberic writes; true finally that Simon had then been involved in military labour for nearly three years, as the biographer asserts. Wherefore according to this arrangement let us resume Simon's deeds from the death of his father Ralph.

[85] Bereaved of both parents, king Philip attacked him first with snares, King Philip assails the Saint with arms, then with open war; For the king himself began — the words are the biographer's, subjoined to those just cited — to destroy the villages with fire, plunder and the sword; to scatter in every way he could the estates, the towns, and whatever seemed to be his. But he (Simon), intrepid, trusting in the Lord, rousing himself against him, and drawn unwillingly even to this, that he should do evil, girds himself and prepares to resist stoutly. For he stirs up his people, and like a gnashing lion, though grieving in heart, he troubles and lays waste what he finds in the king's power: and declares that he will by no means go back until he possesses his own. Alberic in his Chronicle at the year 1001, after these words, The handing over of Vitry, which however in the Chronicle of St. Peter of Châlons are read at the following year, and these, From this the fifteenth year (in the same Chronicle of St. Peter at 1075) there is found noted, The restitution of Vitry, seizes the occasion of recording the beginnings of this war, which followed some years later and was ended before the restitution: Here it must be said, he says, that Hugh, a noble man, surnamed Bardol, was lord of Bretiæ, that is, of Broyes, and was on one side the neighbouring heir of the count of Vermandois. When Ralph died, the said Hugh Bardol invaded Vitry and Bar-sur-Aube, and this with the assent of king Philip, who was invading the rest of what belonged to count Ralph: now count Ralph had left by his wife, who was called Adela, a son of good disposition named Simon and a daughter named Alaida. Thus Alberic as published by Leibniz; but the text brought forward is openly faulty.

[86] At the end of the said edition there are given various readings and emendations taken from a collation with a parchment codex of Alberic, and, according to some, Hugh also in which we are warned that it must be read: the heir of Ralph, count of Vermandois. On whose death, etc. We are warned of the same in the more correct Readings of Alberic which Mencke, excerpted from an excellent codex of his own library, gave in volume 1 of the Writers of German affairs,

and we learn besides that there, by a new error, is read: He invaded Vitry and Bar-sur-Aube and INFIRMITY. Before those editions Chifflet had brought forward a more correct text in his Observations from various manuscript codices, as follows: Hugh, a noble man, surnamed Bardol, was lord of Brecæ, that is, of Broyes, and was on one side the neighbouring heir of Ralph, count of Vermandois. When that Ralph died, the said Hugh Bardol invaded Vitry and Bar-sur-Aube and La Ferté, etc. Nor yet without any fault in the county of Vermandois, which, as Chifflet also observes, he (Alberic, or rather an unskilled copyist) wrongly ascribes to Ralph, Simon's father. For it is certain that he was count of Crépy and of the Vexin by hereditary right, and further, from his wife's dowry, of Bar-sur-Aube, perhaps also of Vitry; but not of Vermandois. The royal codex, as I pointed out, has Vendensis instead of Veromandiæ, and not without fault; for it ought to be written Vadensis. And this I plainly think too. Valois and Crépy, that is Valesium, were formerly one and the same county, as was said before.

[87] But who was that Hugh Bardol, lord of Broyes, and on what ground is he called the neighbouring heir of Ralph of Crépy? the son of the sister, not of her who That this Ralph had, besides his sons Walter and Simon, two daughters, of whom, while he still lived, one received as husband count Heribert, the other the most noble youth Bartholomew, is established from the Charter of St. Remigius of Reims quoted at length in §7; but of their names there is deep silence there. About them, and about their marriages, descendants and successions, Chifflet in his manuscript Observations instituted various and lengthy disputations, as may be conjectured from the titles of chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7. But these I pass over, lest without profit they turn us too far from our aim, and I use only the testimonies of the ancients which may elucidate the question proposed. One daughter of Ralph Alberic brings forward in his Chronicle, one likewise the author of the manuscript Charter or Account of the lords of the Cell of La Ferté-sur-Aube. The former calls his Alaida, then Adala; but the latter writes his as Aaliz, so that, if you look at the name, you would say that the same woman is denoted in both: yet that the talk is of different women, the circumstances betray.

[88] was married to the count of Vermandois, Alberic a little after the words quoted at number 85, giving such genealogy of Ralph as he has, says: Walter the White begot Ralph, the father of Ralph, who begot the countess of Vermandois, namely Adala, of whom was born Alaiz, wife of count Hugh. The same, the women's names being suppressed, Ivo, bishop of Chartres, has in letter 45 in the Paris edition of the year 1610: The aforesaid Walter begot Ralph, the father of another Ralph, who begot the countess of Vermandois, of whom was born the wife of count Hugh. But these circumstances make us certain that Adala in Alberic is that daughter of Ralph whose husband he himself in the Reims Charter names as count Heribert, namely count of Vermandois. This is beautifully elucidated by an Excerpt of an old Chronicle from the year of Christ 986 to 1109, published from a codex of the Thou library in Duchesne, volume 4 of the Writers, page 97, and by a Fragment of a manuscript History from the Petau library in the same place, page 150. The words of the former will suffice: But Hugh (son of king Henry and brother of Philip), being grown a young man, took to wife the daughter of Herbert, count of Vermandois, born of the daughter of count Ralph, through whom he obtained two counties, Vermandois and Valois.

[89] but of the other, who was married to the lord of Broyes. Let us now consult the text of the author of the Account of the Lords of the Cell of La Ferté-sur-Aube: By her (Adela, countess of Bar, Ralph) begot two sons, Walter and Symon, and one daughter, that is Aaliz, whom Bartholomew, a youth of Broyes, took to wife, and by her begot Hugh Bardul. Behold a daughter of Ralph who was married at the same time to the most noble youth Bartholomew at which the other had as husband count Heribert, as is clear from the Reims Charter; whence the Account of the Lords of La Ferté must be corrected, since it suggests that only one daughter was begotten by Ralph. Further, which we shall discuss on another occasion, Chifflet thinks that the wife of Bartholomew, here called Aaliz, is she about whom Alberic relates this at the year 1061: But it is to be known that the countess Alaidis, sister of holy Simon, bore to Theobald, count of Champagne, two sons, Philip bishop of Châlons and Hugh count of Champagne. He thinks, I say, that she after Bartholomew's death married Theobald, and about her name and those of the others subjoins this note: But hence (you will say) something like an absurdity will follow, namely that there were four Adelaides of one family in succession: the first, the wife of count Ralph, the mother of St. Simon; the second, their daughter the countess of Vermandois; the third, her sister, successively the wife of Bartholomew of Broyes and of count Theobald; the fourth, the daughter of the countess of Vermandois, the wife of Hugh the Great.

[90] To which I answer: If Alberic truly named the countess of Vermandois, who was St. Simon's sister, Adala Certain things are observed about the name of each (for he alone of the ancients, so far as I know, called her by name), I shall not reject these four princely women of the same family bearing the same name: if indeed they truly bear the same name. For although these words Adela, Adala, Adelais, Aalys, Alaidis and Alais seem synonymous, namely from the same etymology and meaning, which is said to sound NOBLE, yet in common usage they have some difference. For the mother of St. Simon is always written Adela by the ancients. The countess of Vermandois was named Adala by Alberic alone of the ancients. The wife of Hugh the Great, for the most part, Alais. The wife of Bartholomew of Broyes is read to be called first Aalys in the Account of the lords of La Ferté; then, from the time she was betrothed to count Theobald, Adelays, perhaps with some regard either to her age or to her ampler dignity. So these royal women may have been both in a manner of the same name and yet in some respect of different appellation. To no one will it seem wonderful that Ralph's wife, his daughter, and his granddaughter by that daughter were called by the same name; wherefore if anything can seem like an absurdity, it will consist in this alone, that to two daughters of Ralph by the same wife the same name would have been given without any distinction.

[91] But to remove that absurdity, such as it is, there does not appear to me a sufficient distinction of the sister; in what Chifflet seeks in the common usage of inflecting the same name in various ways; and therefore I should prefer to suspect that either in Alberic or in the Account of the lords of La Ferté the name of one or the other daughter was not rightly expressed: the suspicion is fostered by Claude Hémeré in Augusta Viromanduorum illustrata, page 117 and following, where, treating of Heribert IV the count, he says that he had as wife a daughter of Ralph II, count of Crépy, and that this had become known from foreign monuments, for of Heribert's marriage, he says, there is deep silence in our parchments. Yet, some things being interposed, he adds: Further, Heribert was commended both by other distinguished virtues and above all by an exceptional piety towards the Saints: who with his wife Hildebranta founded the church of the town of Roye in Vermandois … under the title of St. George, etc. Here he cites the book On sacred Polity, by Choppin, by whom, as he had also affirmed before, Heribert's wife is called Hildebranta. If that book of Choppin were at hand, we could look more deeply into whether he solidly proves that appellation of Heribert's wife, and whether nothing hinders her from being believed the same as the countess of Vermandois, daughter of Ralph of Crépy. I return to Hugh Bardol, about whom the question was raised.

[92] He was therefore Ralph's grandson, born namely of that one of his daughters and about Hugh who had received as husband Bartholomew, lord of Broyes, who was taken from among the living before the death of Ralph his father-in-law, as we learn from a Charter drawn up in the year 1085 in favour of the church of St. Julian of Sézanne in the diocese of Troyes, and printed by Nicolas Camuzat in the Promptuarium of that diocese, page 372, from which I copy a few things: For since Bartholomew, lord of Broyes, a most famous knight, who held that very church, although unjustly (for no layman justly holds one), departed by chance from this life, the aforesaid count Stephen Henry (son of Theobald, count of Champagne) undertook to govern the honour, until the son of that Bartholomew, who had remained an orphan and a little child, should come to a man's age. And when it pleased that the paternal inheritance should be given back to him, by the exhortation and entreaty of the count, and by the admonition of many others, and chiefly for the redemption of his own soul and that of his father and of his grandfather of the same surname — and he himself is surnamed Bardulf — he granted and handed over that church and the whole donation … Wherefore the monks serving God there gave fellowship to Hugh himself and to all who were with him, both in prayers and in vigils and in alms … Now that donation was made in the year MLXXXI from the Lord's Incarnation (by Stephen Henry, Hugh's guardian), but in the year one thousand and eighty-five it was confirmed by Hugh Bardulf himself. Bartholomew had left Hugh a little child; he had died therefore long before the death of Ralph, whose goods the same Hugh Bardulf invaded not long after, and hence most probably Alberic calls him even then Lord of Broyes.

[93] his crime against his Uncle Chifflet from this Charter and from the time at which Walter, Simon's brother, was slain, conjectures that Bartholomew was taken from life not long after, that is, about the year 1065, and that Hugh Bardulf, when on the death of his grandfather Ralph he invaded Vitry, Bar and La Ferté, was a youth of sixteen or seventeen years. But why he invaded those towns Alberic, who alone is an ancient author known to us in this matter, does not sufficiently declare; nor does Chifflet inquire more laboriously. It does not seem doubtful that Ralph assigned something of his dominions to his daughters, which they should bring as dowry to their husbands; but it does not seem likely to me either that Hugh, while his uncle Simon lived, occupied those three towns under the title of his mother's dowry as his own and justly to be retained. For, as abbot Guibert testifies, the young lad Simon, when his father died, obtained the honour of his counties, therefore also the honour of the county of Bar, under which title Simon afterwards appears in instruments. Add that Alberic himself at the year 1075, where he says that peace being made the inheritance was restored to Simon, manifestly includes Vitry in it.

[94] is explained in a milder sense But Alberic calls Hugh the neighbouring heir on one side of count Ralph, perhaps because that same Ralph had provided by will that if Simon, his only son and nearest heir, should depart from life in his youth or without children, a determined part of the dominions should pass to the countess of Vermandois, the other part to the wife of Bartholomew of Broyes, or to their lawful heirs. And in fact, when Simon renounced the world, such a division was made, so that to Hugh or his mother there passed the county of Bar with La Ferté-sur-Aube and Vitry. Hence perhaps the deed of Hugh Bardulf must be expounded in a milder sense than at first sight Alberic's account presents and Chifflet understood, who in his chronological Collection of the History of St. Simon lays down thus:

MLXXII. Count Ralph dies on the XI of the Kalends of March, and is buried at Montdidier, in which same year and in the two or three following king Philip overruns with devastation the hereditary estates of count Simon. Hugh Bardulf, son of Bartholomew lord of Broyes and of Adelaide of Crépy, following the party of king Philip, moves arms against his uncle Simon, by which he occupies Bar with La Ferté-sur-Aube and Vitry. In a milder sense, I say, this can be understood, namely that Hugh Bardulf, seeing his uncle Simon assailed with arms by king Philip, feared lest the Youth should succumb to such great forces, and lest, while the king was bringing one part of the dominions into his power, someone should turn his arms against the other. Hence Hugh may have invaded those three towns, destined for himself after Simon's death, and fortified them, meaning to defend them, should necessity compel, as his own; since he foresaw that his Uncle would be unequal to defending them.

[95] Nor is it an obstacle that Alberic says this was done with the assent of king Philip: is taken. for either he did not perceive Hugh's mind, or he gave his assent lest he should draw more adversaries upon himself, namely Theobald, count of Champagne, Hugh's stepfather; Theobald's son by his former wife, Stephen Henry, Hugh's guardian; and others whose interest it was to protect his rights. To conjecture thus I am led, first, by the integrity of the said count Stephen Henry so clearly commended in the instrument of Sézanne cited above, who, while he was Hugh Bardulf's guardian, restored the goods which his deceased father Bartholomew had unjustly held, and afterwards induced Hugh himself to confirm the act drawn up on that matter. For he, although he might not judge that arms should be taken up against the king in defence of Simon, certainly does not seem likely to have permitted his ward to commit so great a crime against his Uncle. Secondly, I am led by the silence of our biographer, who did not fear to carp at king Philip with a sharp pen, but does not even name Hugh.

Mabillon, asportare*

ibid. Bonooculo*

ibid. hæc*

Mabillon, belli*

§ IX. The fable about a serpent found in the mouth of his father's corpse; another fiction; the Saint's journey to Rome and his return; the renewal of the war; the inheritance recovered; the peace.

He has his father's body dug up and translated; The very grave business of a war of nearly three years did not hinder Simon from meanwhile fulfilling the part of a Christian prince, and, while he contended for the temporal goods owed to him, from busying himself to earn heavenly ones also. For then, as the biographer testifies, he gave himself to fastings and alms, macerated his body with a rough hair-shirt, and, wearied with the daily labours of arms, assisted at the nightly offices in church. Then, anxious about the salvation of his dead father's soul, he consulted Pope Gregory VII, and according to his answer transferred his father's body from Montdidier, a place which while living he had unjustly possessed, to the monastery of St. Arnulf at Crépy, as we have shown above from the same biographer and from Simon's own Charter, but we repeat it here because that was the chief cause or occasion why Simon afterwards sent word of dismissal to worldly things and put on the monk's habit. Guibert of Nogent tells the matter thus. And when he (Ralph) was uncovered before the removal, and laid bare before his Son's eyes, when he beheld the mouldering body of his most powerful and once most fierce begetter, he betook himself to the contemplation of the wretched condition of man. And from that time whatever of exaltation and of glory smiled upon him he now began to loathe. This will therefore having been conceived, with his desire at last growing fervent, he brought forth what he was in labour with, etc.

[97] Mabillon in his preliminary Observations on the Life of Simon, the story having quoted Guibert's text, adds: Of the same matter we have a most brilliant witness in Thibaut de Mailly, whose fragment on that subject, expressed in barbarous verses in the old French idiom, Labbe cites in the Genealogical Tables, which indeed we have thought it would be unwelcome to no one to report here. To these he appends the said French fragment, which since the Latin writer made so much of it, he ought at the same time to have considered that he would render a far more welcome service if he had added a Latin interpretation of it. For what usefulness or pleasure do the verses bring to most readers, who do not know that barbarous French idiom and consequently cannot make out whether anything is contained in them different from Guibert's testimony? We are accustomed to exhibit similar monuments rendered into Latin only. But here, since we do not sufficiently trust our own such knowledge as it is of that barbarous idiom, we set the French text also before, so that if anywhere we have turned aside from the true meaning of the words, those more skilled in the language may themselves correct it.

Ains vos vueil amentoivre [*] de Simon de Crepy Qui le comte Raoul son pere defouï; [*] Et trouva en sa bouche un froit [*] plus que demi, Qui li rongeoit la langue, dont jura & menti. Li Cuens vit la merveille, moult en fut esbaï: Est-ce donc men peres [*], qui tant chatiaux broï? Ja n'avoit il en France nuz prince si hardi, Qui osast ver li fere ne guerre ne estri. Quant qu'il avoit au siecle laissa & enhai, Bien le laissa voir, que sa terre en guerpi Dedans une forest en essil s'enfoui, La devint charbonners [*], i tel ordre choisi.

[98] The eight former verses I interpret thus:

But I wish to call back to your memory Simon of Crépy, of the serpent, Who dug up his father count Ralph from the tomb, And found in his mouth a serpent more than moderate in size, Which was gnawing the tongue with which he had sworn and lied. The Count saw the prodigy; he was greatly astounded: Is this then my father, who crushed so many castles? There was of old no prince so bold Who would dare to attack him either with war or with quarrel.

The interpretation of the four last verses is less easy for me; yet the sense, I think, is that Simon, moved by that sight, abandoned whatever he possessed in the world, hid himself in a wood, and there took the monastic habit and order. In the same sense, as will presently be seen, Chifflet took those four verses, who also brought a help to the exposition of others, since in his manuscript copy transmitted hither he added to the more obscure French words more intelligible ones in the same idiom, as we have noted in the margin.

[99] found in his mouth, At what period the author flourished neither Claude Fauchet teaches, from whose book on the Ancient poets the Fragment is taken, nor does Chifflet inquire, nor Mabillon, nor Labbe, nor Chastelain in the universal Martyrology, page 982, where he produces the same Fragment, nor anyone else that I know, except Adrien de la Morlière in his book on the Illustrious families of Picardy, page 232. For he, reviewing the illustrious persons of the house of Mailly (de Mailly), produces Thibaut de Mailly, who in the year 1277 stood as witness to a certain marriage contract, and conjectures that he is the same who put together that poetical Work. If he conjectures truly, there can be no doubt that, where Thibaut differs from others, he is of far less authority than Guibert and the biographer, as being about a century and a half later than they. Besides, his Work is placed by all among those which in French are called Romans, and which with all sound in Latin fabulous Histories, fabulous narrations; so that I do not know by what right he is adorned with the title of a most brilliant witness: but let Chifflet speak, chapter 9 of the Observations: What Claude Fauchet reports in book 2 On the Old French poets, number VIII, from Thibaut de Mailly, about a serpent found in the mouth of count Ralph when his corpse was dug up, and about the other circumstances of the matter, smacks of poetic licence: especially in this, that he says that Simon his son, moved by that sight, withdrew into a wood and there became a charcoal-burner: which words either ineptly depict or too immodestly touch upon his withdrawal into the desert and the black garments of a monk.

[100] The production of worms of this kind from human corpses seems to have nothing at all beyond the course of nature, to us it is a fiction: although for the most part it has been commonly imputed to prodigies. And to it (as I judge) the author of the Life of St. Simon alluded when he says in chapter 2: "Behold the Man of God, struck with dread at this fact, if he had before judged the world contemptible, then judged it horrible; if in anything he had loved it, he thoroughly taught that it must be fled like a venomous snake." For my part, saving a better judgment, I should believe that Simon was so affected partly by the rescript of Pope Gregory, ordering the body to be dug up from a place unjustly possessed before and transferred to another, and prayers and pious works to be instituted for the soul of the dead man, which the biographer relates; partly by the sight of the mouldering corpse gnawed by worms of a man once most powerful and most richly adorned with honour, dignities and riches, as we understand from Guibert's narration. Nay, while it is lawful to use conjectures, I would think that the fiction — for such the story of the serpent will be to me until it is proved by better testimony — I would think, I say, that that fiction took its origin from the biographer's very words, in which he says that the Saint taught that the world must be fled like a venomous snake. But I also strongly suspect that from the same fiction was born the opinion about Ralph having died under excommunication, which Chifflet did not see fit to touch upon; but which I have already signified once and again does not seem likely to me.

[101] Chifflet after the words just cited touches on another assertion about the Saint, another fiction. saying: Fauchet moreover is to be noted, in that he interprets this Simon of Crépy as the bastard son of Ralph I, count of Vermandois, son of Hugh the Great, who was living in the year MCXXX. For it was most certainly our holy Simon by whom the body of his father Ralph was dug up and translated, as is established from the charters of Crépy and from his Life; from which also it appears that there profited Simon either that spectacle of human misery or his piety towards his dead parent: so that from that time above all he began to turn away from the vanity of the world, to bestow much upon churches and the poor, and by other pious works to pave for himself the way to that sanctity which afterwards flowered in him. The opinion of Fauchet and of others who judged that our Simon was the illegitimate son of Ralph, count of Vermandois, Labbe too refutes in the Genealogical Tables, page 147, and to Labbe Mabillon acceded in his preliminary Observations on the Life of our Simon; but I, when above I treated of his birth, thought it should be neglected, as being so openly false that to those reading our documents it cannot bring even the least shadow of likelihood.

[102] The terror which the sight of his father's corpse had cast upon him Simon sets out for Rome; more probably impelled Simon to undertake the journey to Rome, which, after narrating Ralph's translation, the biographer describes, beginning thus: Meanwhile, while the region is consumed by the devastation of the king and of himself (Simon), and men are driven from their own dwellings, he embraces fear for his misdeeds: presently, deferring the contests of war for a time … he resolves to go to the lord Pope Gregory that he might enjoin penance on him. And without delay … he arrived at Rome, the Lord leading him. The same journey Alberic mentions in his Chronicle at the year 1074, but

if it is later than the oft-mentioned translation, as, the circumstances and the order kept by the biographer being regarded, is more likely, then according to the chronology laid down above as more probable to us it did not happen before the following year. Further, his deeds at Rome, which we shall read more fully in the Life, the same Alberic gives contracted into a compendium, as follows: Count Simon went to Rome and seeks counsel and penance, while the region is devastated by the war between himself and king Philip. Pope Gregory ordered him to give up his arms, and so enjoined penance. Of which penance the Pope retained part upon himself, distributed part to two religious, and so, absolving him, sent him back to his own, restored his arms, and committed to him the land to be governed until he should restore peace with the king: appointing also as his guardians Hugh, bishop of Die, then Cardinal in France, and Hugh, abbot of Cluny.

[103] returning, he takes up arms again and as victor His return into France, and what followed it down to the peace with the king, the same Alberic reports at the year 1075 in these few words: Count Simon, returned from Rome, attacks king Philip, and does not desist from the war until he had conquered him. The biographer likewise in these few words: Returning therefore, filled with holy gladness, attacking the king again, he embraces the struggle like an excellent soldier, and until he should stand forth victor, though unwillingly, he is by no means released from the business of war. Chifflet in the chronological collection of the History of St. Simon refers these things to the year 1075, observing nothing further; but Mabillon in volume 5 of the Annals, page 92, treating the same matter, says: I do not know what this penance looked to. For Simon, having returned to his own, again renews the war with Philip, nor did he desist before, victory being won, he brought the king to conditions of peace. I for my part conceive the matter thus from the biographer's narration. Simon, attacked with arms, had been unwillingly drawn, for the defence of his goods, into the evil ordinarily annexed to wars.

He had stirred up his people and, like a gnashing lion, though grieving in heart, had troubled and laid waste what he found in the king's power.

[104] receives his inheritance; peace is concluded. In this either he himself, perhaps carried away by youthful and warlike ardour, had exceeded measure, or had not sufficiently restrained his own men who exceeded it. Then, all things being considered more maturely and scrupulously, he imputed all the evil to himself, was seized with fear, went off to Rome to seek penance for past offences and counsel for what he should do thereafter. Both the Pontiff imparted, and on his return again committed to him the land to be governed until he should restore peace with the king, and besides wished two men of good report and of the highest authority to be his helpers, namely Hugh, bishop of Die, who then discharged the office of legate in France, and the abbot of Cluny (St. Hugh), to whose teaching and obedience being subject he might be rendered instructed in the divine law, and by whose work and intervention most probably peace was arranged between the king and Simon in that very year, namely 1075. To this Alberic refers it; but the biographer describes it thus briefly: But at last, the region being depopulated and both sides weighed down by the heavy burden of toil, counsel of peace is conceived; a conference is appointed by both. What more? An assembly of nobles is held; judgment is given by the wise: the inheritance which had by right fallen to him is adjudged and restored to Simon; peace and concord are confirmed.

ramentevoir*

deterra*

un serpent*

mon pere*

moine noir*

§ X. The dominions of the holy Count; his benefactions to churches and monasteries; the foundation of several Priories.

The Saint, having recovered his dominions, From what we have discussed in the course of the Commentary about Ralph and his dominions, the reader will attain by easy conjecture how great was the power of Simon, his only son and heir; nor will he wonder that he was called by the biographer and by Alberic the Chief officer of the king of the Franks, and that, on the same testimonies, his marriage with the daughter of William, king of the English and duke of Normandy, was desired. Several of Simon's dominions Chifflet enumerates in his manuscript Observations, alleging testimonies, saying: St. Simon possessed his father's counties until his abdication of the world. These were Crépy, the Vexin, and Bar with Vitry. For as count of Crépy he enriched the church of St. Arnulf with gifts and joined it to the congregation of Cluny: as count of the Vexin he granted to those same Cluniacs the village of Mantes, claimed and recovered from king Philip, together with other things; as count of Bar he conferred many things on St. Eugendus, which he also caused to be confirmed by count Theobald. The title of the county of Amiens Chifflet nowhere in his Observations attributes either to Simon or to his father Ralph, nor does he mention it in the division of Simon's dominions, when he renounced the world, between his sisters, the countess of Vermandois and the wife of Bartholomew, lord of Broyes; as though that county had not pertained to them.

[106] Yet that it did pertain to them very many things urged: first, Bouchet's Dissertation, that the county of Amiens must be reckoned which Chifflet had, and in which it is clearly shown in what way that county came to Ralph's ancestors and afterwards to himself: secondly, the genealogical Table of the counts of Amiens in Adrien Morlière, in which after his ancestors Ralph and his son Simon are listed; thirdly and finally, the Charter of the same Ralph in the same Morlière, in which he ascribes to himself this title: I, Ralph, by the divine clemency count of Amiens, and says that assent was given to the donation made to the church of Amiens in the year 1069 by Simon, then his only son and heir, that it might remain firm and indissoluble. I would add in the fourth place, as an undoubted witness, Hariulf, abbot of Oudenburg, the contemporary biographer of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, who died in the year 1087, among us in volume III of August at the XV day, but an error lurks in the other title which he joins to him. He has it thus: Christ was making his church fruitful with gifts of graces, kindled by which very many noble and renowned men were leaving the vain prosperity of the world … among whom, like a golden star, the glorious and most beautiful count of the men of Amiens and of Vermandois, Simon, son of count Ralph, inflamed with divine love, cast away the honour or power of his counties, left cities and most opulent castles, etc. Here most clearly the county of Amiens is asserted for Simon, but, as I hinted, there is an error in the added title of Vermandois, which neither he nor his father Ralph ever possessed.

[107] is shown, Perhaps it must be corrected in the same way in which a similar error was corrected at number 86 of this Commentary in the corrupt text of Alberic; namely so that for Vadensium there was set, through carelessness or the ignorance of copyists, Veromandensium. But if anyone wishes to retain Veromandensium, let him use the way which Chifflet entered upon in expounding the Necrology of the monastery of St. Eugendus, where is read: On the third of the Kalends of October died Simon, count of Champagne, a monk of our congregation: on which Chifflet says: But why he is called count of Champagne who was count of Crépy, of the Vexin and of Bar-sur-Aube, the reason seems to be that in his time and through him the county of Bar was added to Champagne and began to be part of it. Perhaps also because his sister Adelais, joined to Theobald in a second marriage, was both in fact and in name countess of Champagne, since she had married into the family of the counts of Champagne: for it was easy for the titles of honour of Brother and sister to be commonly reckoned as shared. Let him use, I say, this way, since the reason seems altogether the same. For at the same time and through the same Simon the counties of Crépy or Valois, of the Vexin and of Amiens passed to Heribert IV, count of Vermandois, on account of his wife, the other sister of Simon, both in fact and in name countess of Vermandois. Yet the correction assigned before pleases me more, and I would prefer to apply it to the sacred Calendars, whose authors, following Hariulf or Alberic, or rather the depraved text of one or the other, called Simon the son of the count of Vermandois — the words I gave in §1.

[108] he benefits various churches; Since mention has now occurred of the instruments from which Chifflet proved Simon's various counties, before we proceed with the biographer to the Saint's marriage — as to which it is not sufficiently clear whether it was attempted long before his withdrawal from the world — we shall transfer hither the said instruments and others. Thence we shall be taught, at least in part, his pious munificence towards churches and their ministers, and his munificent piety towards the dead, before he bade farewell to the world. We gave in § VII of this Commentary, from Marlot's Metropolis of Reims and from Chifflet's manuscript copy, the lengthy letters of count Ralph about the donation made to the monastery of St. Remigius of Reims for the burial and soul's repose of his son Walter, and we showed that that donation was not only then confirmed by Simon, but also pointed out that it was afterwards increased.

[109] the church of St. Remigius at Reims, The letters drawn up on this matter, and annexed in both places to the former, we have reserved for this place, as not doubting that they are later than the donation and the death of Ralph. They run thus: Again be it known to all the sons of Mother Church, that Ralph of the village of Wadenum obtained from count Simon that there should be given to St. Remigius a certain hospice, which is in the township of the castle of Bussy, in which the monks of that same Saint arriving there might be lodged. Which the same Simon, after he assented, made as a donation to St. Remigius through Anselm the monk and through the same R. []; there being present Wido the castellan with his wife; Eriger the Count's bailiff, Constantius his serf, and Adelard the dean. Now that donation consists of two men, Wypert and Laibert, and two women, Gisla and Odala, with their children and houses and lands [] and their goods. All these the same Simon gave to blessed Remigius, to be possessed as freely as he had held them before by inheritance. After this he gave Constantius, son of Ermengard, who had died in the alms of St. Remigius. Besides the differences marked in the margin, there are missing in Marlot the proper names of the two men and two women whom the holy Count is said to have given to St. Remigius. But Bussy, as the same Marlot testifies, is a place now called Pompelle, and distant three miles from the city of Reims.

[110] From St. Remigius of Reims we pass to the monastery of St. Mary of Molesme of the Order of St. Benedict in the diocese of Langres, that of St. Mary of Molesme, in which at its very beginnings (for it is said to have been founded in the year 1075) the liberality of our Count shone wonderfully, to be declared or proved by no other monuments than the letters taken from the archive of the said monastery and mentioned several times: We wish it to be made known to all, both future and present, that the lord Symon, count of the men of Bar, gave to blessed Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, and to the lord abbot Robert and to the brethren serving God in the place of Molesme, whatever he had in demesne at the village which is called Granciacus: namely Robert and his wife Wilesendis with all their children: the wood which is called Carmeacus, and the fishery with the gaura [*]: on this tenor, that every year the anniversary day of his parents, namely of count Ralph and of his brother Walter and of his mother Adela, and also of the lord Symon himself, after his death shall have occurred, be kept by the brethren. But the customs which

the peasants owe, he likewise gave, so that in the aforesaid place of Molesme whomever the Count himself shall wish to send to the monastic life may be received and maintained. Sign of count Symon. S. of Ansculf the Seneschal. S. of Everard the viscount. S. of Wido of Ormoy. S. of Fulbert the provost. S. of Arnulf the viscount. S. of Drogo. S. of Odard the marshal. S. of Milo the Orphan. S. of Elias, knight of Thorote. This was done publicly at the castle which is situated upon the river Aube, which is called La Ferté, in the reign of king Philip. On the VIII of the Kalends of March died count Ralph. On the VIII of the Ides of September, count Walter. On the III of the Ides of September died the countess Adelina.

[111] Abbot Robert, named in the letters, is St. Robert, first abbot of Molesme and founder of the Cistercian Order, and he confirms the donations of others whose Acts our Predecessors illustrated at the XXIX day of April, and on that occasion gave a fuller account of the monastery of Molesme founded by him. Those letters are followed by others in which are enumerated the donations of various men made to the same monastery, and approved and confirmed by our Count, on whose lordship the things given depended: which is the reason why I transfer these hither too: Be it known to all present and to come, that Hildier of Vilenessa gave to God and to holy Mary and to the convent of Molesme the church of Granciacus, and absolutely all that pertains to it, except half the tithe. And not only he, but all the lords of this village gave to it, without any share of their own, the mill and the oven and the tithe, and a third of their own labour and of the labour of their own household. Moreover they also bestowed upon it the whole half of the aforesaid lordship in all things and revenues and customs, without the naming of any exception.

[112] The aforesaid Hildier gave the half of one quarter: made to it: Wido of Bussy and Odo his brother the half of another quarter: Ralph of Capsannum the half of a third; Walter of Avallurra the half of a fourth quarter. Of this donation the witnesses were Gosbert of Bar, Hugh the Red, Ingo, Bencelinus. And because the aforesaid lords held these benefices from other lords [], namely from Rainald of Sassenay, and from Milo of Bairia, and from Rainald the constable; these too approved the donation made, and confirmed it by giving with their own hand and by calling witnesses, in the hearing and with the testimony of Milo, Ailulf, Everard, Wido, Gosbert, Oliver, Constantine, Benscelinus. But Simon, the excellent count of Bar, from whom these also held, most willingly assented to and approved the gift: and he himself besides gave to the aforesaid church whatever he had in demesne in the aforesaid village: namely Robert and Wilesendis his wife with their sons and daughters, and the wood which is called Carmeacus, and the fishery with the gaurea*, and all the customs which the peasants of the aforesaid village owed him.

[113] the Jura abbey of St. Claude, Without doubt Simon adorned with very many benefactions the abbey of St. Eugendus, now of St. Claude, in which he afterwards put on the monk's habit. Jacques Vignier in the Chronicle of Langres commemorates ten or twelve Priories or lesser monasteries which Simon founded or built and committed to the care of that abbey. But since documents are wanting by which we might solidly confirm each, we set forth first from Chifflet's manuscript collections the letters from which it may at least be generally established that he was a benefactor to the said abbey: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Since the action of human affairs without doubt wavers in many ways, and through certain innumerable changes the form of the world in a manner shows beforehand its own failing and destruction, it is worthy and fitting that the desire of transitory things be avoided, and that the means of those which abide be in every way longed for and embraced. That therefore I might prepare for myself a most delightful portion of them, and might one day be the heir of so great a good, be it known to all, both to those after us and to those of today, that I, count Theobald, acquiescing in the petition of the lord count Symon, have approved that whatever in the land of Bar count Notcherius and Ralph and count Symon and all of their offspring have given or shall give to blessed Eugendus of the Jura, all of it the same Saint may hold in perpetuity without calumnious claim by my grant, and, my wife and my sons willing and approving the same, may possess peacefully for ever. This was done at Surunculæ at the Bridge of the river Marne in the year of the Incarnate Word one thousand and seventy-six, Indiction VX, and in the VIII X of the reign of the lord Philip.

[114] and joins to it many At the time when those letters were given our Count was probably already meditating the abdication of the world; and therefore he wished the goods and privileges which Notcherius, count of Bar, and Ralph of Crépy had formerly conferred on the abbey, and which he himself had added and was about to add, to be approved and ratified by Theobald, count of Champagne, by his wife, his own sister, and by their sons, to whom the county of Bar was to devolve. But the chronological notes, which I have transferred hither as they are marked in the copy, both agree with the year 1076, which was Philip's 18th, and in which the 15th Indiction began to run in the month of September. Let Vignier now be heard at the same year 1076: In this very year there was made public the admirable conversion of Simon, the most illustrious and most powerful count of Bar-sur-Aube, of Crépy or Valois, and of Mantes, ten or XII lesser monasteries, which they call Priories, having been founded by him at that very time under the care of St. Eugendus: of which six or seven belong to this bishopric. The first, in the city of Bar-sur-Aube itself, is called by the name of Peter, and has joined to it the chief parish of the town. The second, sacred to St. Germana, is placed on a neighbouring hill, where there remain the famous and ample traces of a Roman camp, which we have described elsewhere with other notes of antiquity. The third, like the former, well enough endowed, is in the town of La Ferté-sur-Aube, of a most pleasant aspect. The fourth is that of Selve-Rouge or Roboreta in the same valley along the river Aube; as also the fifth, of St. Leodegarius. But the sixth is at Confinium in the same tract. About that of La Motte on the island there is room for doubt. That of Sarmaise, which is also attributed to him, was indeed from his means, but properly of the founding of Hugh, count of Champagne, his nephew, not of him: nor is it of our bishopric.

[115] The Priories assigned by Vignier Chifflet too lists in his manuscript On the Priories established anywhere in the world some account of which is here added. which look to the monastery of St. Claude as members to their head; and to each he adds the years of the documents in which mention of the Priory occurs: but he alleges no document which is not later than the Saint; and hence we conjecture that he too had not at hand testimonies by which to establish Vignier's statements. Most of them he places with Vignier in the diocese of Langres, and of the first writes thus: The Priory of St. Peter of Bar-sur-Aube, in which there ought to be two monks with the Prior, not counting the sacristan. It is mentioned in Bulls of the years MCLXXXVI and MCCXLV. Of the second: The Priory of St. Stephen and St. Germana of Mont-Bar-sur-Aube, in which there ought to be two monks besides the sacristan. Charters of the years MCXLIX, MCLIX, MCCXLV. Its church Robert, bishop of Langres, had already in the year MXCI conferred on abbot Hunald and his monastery. The last words Chifflet declares a little more fully in the Chronicle of St. Eugendus, drawn out through the series of abbots, saying: To Hunald Robert, bishop of Langres, adjudged the church which is called St. Germana's, dedicated in honour of St. Stephen, in the old castle of Bar upon the river Aube; the abbot and monks of Moutier-la-Celle approving and remitting their claim, in the year MXCI.

[116] The same Chifflet in the same place, a little lower, treating of abbot Humbert, an account is here added. Hunald's successor, says: Humbert, who is also Hubert, received a privilege from Pope Paschal II in the year of Christ MC. But in the following year MCI Hugh, count of Troyes and of Bar, confirmed to the same abbot the gifts conferred on the churches of St. Stephen and St. Germana of Bar-sur-Aube by the countess Adela his grandmother and by his uncle count Simon, himself adding others of his own. And so he teaches us indeed that Simon deserved well of the said Priory of St. Germana, yet not so that he was its first author or founder; since Adela too, Simon's mother, who died while he was still a Boy, showed favour to that same Priory. Of the third Priory mentioned in Vignier, Chifflet has nothing in his manuscript on the Priories except this: The Priory of St. Eugendus of La Ferté-sur-Aube, in which there ought to be two monks with the Prior. Charters of the years MCXLIX, MCLXXXVI and MCCXLV. But of the fourth also only this: The Priory of SS. Felix and Angobert of Silvaroura or of Suvenrosa, as the Bulls of the years MCLXXXVI and MCCXLV have it. Of the fifth: The Priory of St. Leodegarius of Lastriceium, and he cites the same Bulls. Of the sixth: The Priory of St. Maurice of Confinium. Diplomas of the years MCXLIX, MCLXXXVI and MCCXLV. Of the Priory of La Motte, which is Vignier's seventh and doubtful, Chifflet is silent, unless perhaps it be that which he calls the Priory of St. Simon of Muthua or Multua in the diocese of Besançon. But that of Sarmaise he places in the diocese of Châlons, agreeing in the rest with Vignier: The Priory of holy Mary of Sarmaise. Charters of the years MCLXXXVI and MCCXLV. It was founded in the year MXCIII by Hugh, count of Champagne, and his mother Alais, and his brother Philip, bishop of Châlons.

[117] the monastery of St. Arnulf of Crépy Here, keeping such order of times as there is, we should have to treat of the goods with which Simon on the XI of the Kalends of April of the year 1077 enriched the monastery of St. Arnulf of Crépy for the burial and soul's repose of his parents; but since for elucidating them nothing offers itself besides the biographer's narration and the Charter given at number 80 and following, where we discussed the year of the death of his father Ralph, thither we refer the reader and hasten to other matters. Worthy of report is the instrument which Chifflet received from Bouchet, copied from the archive of Cluny; namely a letter of count Simon to St. Hugh, abbot of Cluny, by which he subjects to his Congregation the monastery of St. Arnulf just cited, formerly founded by Walter the White, count of the Vexin, his paternal great-great-grandfather. Its tenor is this: To the venerable abbot Hugh and to the whole Congregation of the monastery of Cluny, count Simon, the little servant of your holiness, greeting. Be it known to your highness, most blessed father, that I love you in the Lord [] more than all men living in the flesh, and seek your advantage and honour so far as I am able. I grant therefore to you and to all your successors the abbey of St. Arnulf, which is built in the castle which [] is called Crépy, that it may be wholly subject to you, and that you may choose there an abbot from among your monks, who may be able to rule that monastery according to God and according to the Rule of blessed Benedict.

[118] he subjects it to the Cluniac I wish you therefore to know that I have done this with the counsel and with the will of my men, namely of the greater ones: and also that the king at my entreaty has thus confirmed this little charter: Philip, namely, standing by, and Ivo, bishop of Senlis, consenting. Witnesses: Simon the steward, Simon, Milo, Orfanes. Done in the house of holy Mary of Paris on the feast day of all Saints. S. [] of king Philip. These letters, from the same archive of Cluny, Mabillon published in print in his preliminary Observations on the Life, and the writers of the enlarged Gallia Christiana* in volume 10 among the Instruments of the church of Senlis. The former's edition scarcely differs from ours, but that of the latter, besides the variant readings marked here, expresses the witnesses thus: Simon, steward of count Simon, Milo, Orfanus. The same writers noted in the margin of the letters the year 1076: but in the same volume, column [ ], gathering the deeds of Ivo, bishop of Senlis, who subscribed them, they pointed out that for the year 1076 must be substituted 1078, since certainly in this year (they say) Ivo was present at the council of Soissons, and confirmed the abbey of St. Arnulf given by Simon, count of Crépy, to Hugh, abbot of Cluny. If the confirmation of Ivo has any connexion with the council of Soissons — which I do not think, nor do those writers clearly signify it — no certain epoch of the letters can thence be sought; since they were written at Paris.

[119] congregation, which also with other For they could have been written and confirmed by Ivo's subscription or approbation at Paris in the year 1077 or earlier, and then confirmed at Soissons in the council in the year 1078. Besides, it is not so certain that that council was held in the year 1078. It is indeed mentioned in the Chronicle of Cambrai at this year, as Marlot observes in volume 2 of the Metropolis of Reims; yet he himself attaches it to the preceding year. But Dormay in the History of Soissons, book 5, chapter 14, contends with more than one argument that it was more probably held before 1078. Whatever at length be the case about the council, that we should not defer the writing of the letters beyond the month of November of the year 1077 is urged by king Philip's Diploma, from which we are taught that Simon in that very year 1078 was a monk. But that Diploma, since it instructs us about other benefactions conferred on the Cluniacs by Simon, most probably not yet a monk, can not unseasonably be exhibited here: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I, Philip, king of the Franks, restore now and grant to him every gift which the lord Simon, lately count, now by God's grace made a monk, gave to the church of Cluny, and which by evil counsel I took away from him, for the love of the aforesaid Simon and for the fraternity of the place.

[120] Namely the village of Mantes and all that pertains to it, benefactions he adorns it. that is, the meadows and tillages and villages and all the cultivated land, and all that which the aforesaid Man possessed of that same village. Besides this I grant and restore the whole fishery of a certain village which is called Etluton, and the whole land with its tenants, and thirty pounds of coin from the toll of the castle of Mantes: and the fief of Arnulf, who was the squire of count Walter: and carts three times in each year from Bouenvilla. Moreover I also grant a certain wine-press which Warinus my provost bestowed. Of this grant these are the witnesses: namely Alberic of Coucy; Adam the constable; Hugh of Le Puiset; Guiffred of Chaumont; Warner of Senlis; Paganus, brother of the count of Corbeil; Alberic the canon; Humbert and William of Rozoy; Hugh, count of Metlinda; Hugh Stavelus of Mantes. This Charter of Mantes was confirmed by king Philip in the sight of the aforesaid witnesses. † This is the sign of king Philip reigning, written by his own hand in the year from the Lord's Incarnation MLXXVIII. This same Diploma is extant in the Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, column 527: but is faultily said to be given in the year MLXXVI. Chifflet, whose manuscript copy I have followed, expressly points out that in the original the year MLXXVIII is marked.

Marlot, Rodulfum*

ibid. & terris* is absent

probably scapha* (a skiff)

supply tenebant*

others, in Deum*

others, qui*

others, † Sign.*

§ XI. A marriage twice attempted; twice happily avoided by the Saint; the degree of his consanguinity with Matilda, queen of the English.

The daughter of Heldebert, count of the March, Since it is settled to copy Chifflet's Observations in his own words whenever they agree with our order and matter, I begin this § from his chapter XI. For count Simon, returned from Rome, peace having been arranged between him and king Philip by the arbitration of princely men and nobles, a wife was sought, the daughter of Heldebert, count of the March: which March, namely, divides the Arverni from the Lemovices; whence it is from time to time ascribed to one or other of these two peoples. In the records of the consecration of king Philip I, drawn up in the year of Christ MLIX, in the series of the counts, next after William of Auvergne is reckoned Heldebert of that March, namely the Auvergnat one, and this is that very Heldebert who betrothed his daughter, a girl of outstanding beauty and excellent disposition, to Simon, the second of that name among the counts of the March. Afterwards Heldebert IV sold his county to Henry II, king of the English, in the year MCLXXVII, when setting out for the Eastern expedition, in which he died at Constantinople on the XXIV of June of the year MCLXXX. The author of the Life of St. Simon in chapter 4 [*] has a brilliant narration about this betrothal of his with the daughter of the consul Heldebert, in which he compares him with St. Alexius, although (as it seems) he is to be preferred to him, because Alexius, slipping away from his father's house on the day of the marriage, took counsel for himself alone, whereas Simon had care also for his betrothed, in that he persuaded her, all the allurements of the world being renounced by her, to become the bride of Christ.

[122] the Saint leads his betrothed, For he destined her, with two "colleagues both in conversion and in nearness of family," to La Chaise-Dieu, a place renowned for religion, that there, their secular dress being changed, they might be clothed with the habit of monastic profession: "of whom one, excelling in religiousness, was afterwards ordained bishop of the city of Bourges" — Aldebert, I think, or Hildebert, from abbot of Déols the sixtieth in order as archbishop of Bourges: "who sat four years, eight months and sixteen days," as is reported in the Patriarchium Bituricum in Labbe's Nova Bibliotheca: for that agrees with the reckoning of the times. Chifflet goes on to observe some things about the religious profession of Simon's betrothed at La Chaise-Dieu; but we interrupt his thread for a moment, that we may discharge our promise to the readers and give those things which we have found in ancient writers confirming the biographer's narration. Hariulf in the Life of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, says thus of our Saint: He left a most adorned betrothed. Guibert the abbot, book 1, chapter 10, of his own Life: I have heard also that he had betrothed to himself a certain young woman of the noblest family, who, when she had learned that the most loving Youth had given a divorce to her and to the world, not enduring to seem inferior herself, joined herself, a virgin destined to persevere, to the virginal troops of those serving God.

[123] to become a nun at La Chaise-Dieu, about which Alberic in his Chronicle at the year 1076: Count Simon, when at the urging of the barons he obtained the daughter of count Hildebert of Auvergne, at their first conversation so converted her that she by night, her father not knowing, fled to the monastery of La Chaise-Dieu, where she was made a nun, and with her two nobles, one of whom was afterwards archbishop of Bourges. Now La Chaise-Dieu is in the diocese of Clermont in Auvergne a monastery of men of the Order of St. Benedict, and on that account Chifflet, prolonging his Observation, brings in a question: But hence, he says, there arises a grave difficulty about the profession of that most noble virgin at La Chaise-Dieu, for there appears in the Annals of this monastery no trace of a nunnery in which she could have professed the ascetic life either alone or with other nuns. In which question, certainly most difficult, I lay down first that she was truly made a nun at La Chaise-Dieu. This the ancient author of the Life of St. Simon affirms in express words in chapter 4, from whom Alberic in his Chronicle at the year MLXXVI: (here he inserts Alberic's words given in the preceding number). It is not likely that this illustrious heroine withdrew into the desert without the company of maidens; or, if she slipped alone from her father's house, she without doubt found at La Chaise-Dieu other virgins of the same purpose already established there; in cells indeed neighbouring on the monastery of the men of La Chaise-Dieu, so that these might be helped by them both with the word of God and with the sacred ministries, but yet separated from the company of the men, for the sake of reputation and of conscience.

[124] But Guibert, abbot of Nogent, clearly affirms in his own Life and the monastery of Larrey that this most noble young woman betrothed to count Simon, at his exhortation, inserted herself into the virginal troops of those serving God. Nor was this a singular thing at La Chaise-Dieu. For twelve hundred years ago St. Romanus on Mount Jura, and not long after St. Leonianus at Vienne of the Allobroges, placed nuns not far from monks, and (as Miræus notes in the Account of the churches of Belgium, page LXX) Marchiennes, Hasnon, Denain and some other of the older monasteries of Belgium were formerly of both sexes. From this question he proceeds to another: namely what became of those nuns of La Chaise-Dieu; and he conjectures that those virgins, among whom was Simon's betrothed, were led by Jarento, who from Prior of La Chaise-Dieu was made abbot of the monastery of St. Benignus of Dijon in the year 1077, to Larrey or Elariacum, a village of the lordship of St. Benignus situated in view of the monastery of St. Benignus: and hence he traces the origin of the nunnery of Larrey.

[125] This conjecture Chifflet made public in print in his four Opuscula, page 181, among the Excerpts on the Life of St. Bernard, certain things are noted. and Mabillon in volume 5 of the Annals, page 130, called it not unlike the truth. But he had assigned the place which Chifflet was above seeking — namely where Simon's betrothed first professed the religious life, and whence Jarento summoned the sacred virgins of God to Larrey — from another likely conjecture also, in the same place at page 9, writing in this manner: Certain convents of virgins also were subject to that abbey (of La Chaise-Dieu), one of which, formerly called of St. Andrew of Comps, afterwards of Val-Dieu, began to be founded while holy Robert was living (he died in the year 1067). It is situated in the diocese formerly of Clermont, now of Saint-Flour, on the bank of the little river Sinus-aureus. A few things being interposed: Today too it subsists (that nunnery), subject to La Chaise-Dieu, in which the betrothed of blessed Simon of Crépy seems to have put on the monastic habit.

[126] Scarcely had Simon, the marriage being happily avoided, returned to his own, The marriage with the daughter of the king of the English and, more probably, was meditating after his betrothed's example to send word of dismissal to the world, when a new and heavier assault had to be sustained. William, king of the English and duke of the Normans, who had reared our Count at his court and had perhaps lately helped him with arms in the defence of his inheritance, whether from the affection of a more tender love with which he was borne towards him, or from a desire of binding to himself with a closer bond a Prince so powerful among the Franks,

invited him to a marriage with his daughter and ardently solicited him. The matter, explained more fully by the biographer, Alberic contracted into a compendium thus in his Chronicle at the year 1076 in Leibniz: And behold, William the Bastard, king of the English, who had reared him, sends word to Simon to come in haste to Normandy for a conference with him: and when he had come to the king, he says to him: Desiring to increase my fostering, which is in you [], and passing over the envoys of Alfonso, king of the Spains, and of Robert, prince of Apulia, I have chosen to give you my daughter, whom I was seeking [], as wife. To this Simon answered reverently: My lady, he said, the queen your wife, and I are joined by kindred and by nearness of family: but I wish, if it please you, to seek the counsel and help of the lord Apostolic on this. The king giving his assent, when Simon ought to have hastened to Rome for the aforesaid cause, devoting himself as a monk, he went to St. Eugendus with certain noble men. Several things in these assertions of Alberic after the biographer would have to be discussed and elucidated, and before all the consanguinity of blood with the queen his wife objected by Simon to king William; but Chifflet again comes to our aid in chapter 12 of his Observations, to which he attached this title: What was the consanguinity of count Simon with Matilda, queen of the English: and which therefore I transfer hither entire.

[127] he declines, pleading his consanguinity with the queen; Of Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V, count of Flanders, surnamed of Lille, William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy and king of England, had four sons, Robert, Richard, William and Henry: and five daughters, Agatha, Adeliza, Constance, Adela and Cecily, as the writers of English affairs report, and in particular Ordericus Vitalis in books III, IV, V and VII of the Ecclesiastical History. To the marriage of which of the five daughters count Simon was chiefly invited, Alfonso king of the Spains and Robert Guiscard duke of Apulia being set aside, is uncertain to me. This only I note in passing, that that king of the Spains who in the Life of St. Simon is written Anfurfus or Aufurfus (in the editions of d'Achery and Mabillon Anfursus), is called Elfunsus (in Leibniz's Effunsus) by Alberic; Anfonsus in the charters of Tournus, Adefonsus in the Chronicle of Falco published by us; whether these are faults of the copyists or of the idioms of peoples, he is certainly Alfonso, as he is commonly called, who married Constance, widow of Hugh, count of Chalon, daughter of Robert, duke of Burgundy, granddaughter of Robert the Pious, king of the French, of whose remarkable piety consult our History of Tournus.

[128] the twofold nature of this For the rest, count Simon prudently declined the marriage offered him with the royal maiden under pretext of his consanguinity with her mother Matilda: advising that those skilled in the laws be consulted about it, and that (if it should be necessary) the Roman Pontiff himself be approached. And their kindred was certainly twofold within the seven degrees forbidden in that age: the first under the head of Arnulf the Great, count of Flanders; the other under Herbert I, count of Vermandois, as may be seen in the following tables.

Table I

Arnulf the Great, count of Flanders.

Table II.

Herbert I, count of Vermandois.

Dispensations in these degrees could easily be obtained, especially between spouses of royal blood. But count Simon was thinking of another marriage, namely the chaste embraces of Christ hanging on the Cross. Thus far Chifflet, who presently in the following chapter inquires at what time and under what abbot count Simon became a monk at St. Eugendus's, which question we too judge should be handled in a separate §.

* among us, number 8,

add est*

perhaps quærebant*

§ XII. His taking up of the monastic life, and its date; illustrious imitators of his purpose.

The Saint, pretending to go to Rome, Simon, having slipped away from the court of king William in the manner in which Alberic relates, seems to have interposed no other delay in taking refuge in the monastery than what was required for duly girding himself for the journey to Rome. These things being said, they departed together (king William and count Simon, says the biographer), and then, all the things which seemed to be prepared being disposed in order for the journey, leaving his house, forsaking the delights whose abundance so flowed upon him that almost, after the king, no one in the whole region seemed richer or more opulent in goods, when he ought to have gone to Rome, devoting himself as a monk, he determined to go to St. Eugendus. And when he had arrived there, certain most noble men of his household being joined to him, all together with joy received the habit of the religion of the holy Trinity. Nevertheless neither Alberic's nor the biographer's manner of narrating compels us to restrict that delay to so short a space of time that the Saint could not meanwhile have made donations to churches, at least to some of those reviewed above, nay even have committed to writing his last will concerning his property before faithful friends and fit witnesses, to be afterwards made known to his sisters and their husbands and children: namely to cut short the dissensions, lawsuits and fights which would probably have followed such a withdrawal without previous arrangement and precaution. Nor was there anything which so pressed on the part of William, king of the English, who, although he eagerly desired Simon's marriage with his daughter, probably had no mind to force him to it against his will, and to whom a somewhat longer delay ought not to have been suspect, since he supposed that Simon was truly thinking of a journey to Rome and wished, for the sake of his own dignity and that of the royal bride, to appear before the supreme Pontiff to obtain a dispensation.

[131] bids farewell to the world No less honourably than the biographer does the contemporary author of the Life of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, Hariulf, speak of count Simon's withdrawal, among us in volume III of August, page 239, number 46: Christ was making his Church fruitful with gifts of graces, kindled by which very many noble and renowned men were leaving the vain prosperity of the world and, by mortifying themselves, striving to acquire divine nobility: among whom, like a golden star, the glorious and most beautiful count of the men of Amiens and of Vermandois, Simon, son of count Ralph, inflamed with divine love, cast away the honour or power of his counties; left cities and most opulent castles, left a most adorned betrothed, and, burning to follow Christ, escaped naked from such great wealth, and forsaking the whole nation of the Franks, in which he lorded it among thousands of servants, betook himself to the parts of Italy, chiefly for this, that he might find opportunity of visiting and adoring the most sacred presence of the most glorious apostles Peter and Paul: and while, divinely inspired, he more frequently approached their sacred memorials with pious devotion, the devotion of so great a Man became known to the lord Pope Gregory VII. Thus far Hariulf, who, while he studied brevity (for he there spoke of Simon only because his death, which took place at Rome, was miraculously revealed to St. Arnulf, then a recluse at the monastery of St. Medard of Soissons), omitted some things and confused others. For neither did St. Simon go straight from the Gauls into Italy, as Hariulf's words present it, but betook himself to the monastery of St. Eugendus; nor did Simon's devotion become known to Pope Gregory VII while Simon was frequently visiting the thresholds of the holy Apostles; but while he was living in the desert, whence he was summoned to Rome by the Pontiff through letters sent to the abbot of St. Eugendus. The rest of Hariulf's narration we shall give when we have to treat of Simon's death. Let us now see how other ancient writers speak of his withdrawal.

[132] and becomes a monk at St. Eugendus's; The oft-cited abbot Guibert in his own Life says: From that time whatever of exaltation and of glory smiled upon him he (Simon) now began to loathe. This will therefore having been conceived, with his desire at last growing fervent, he brought forth what he was in labour with, and, a fugitive from his country and his own people, passing the Frankish borders, he withdrew into Burgundy to Saint-Oyend in the territory of the Jura. John the monk in the Chronicle of Bèze, in d'Achery's Spicilegium, volume 2 of the 2nd edition, page 434, commemorating the deeds of Stephen, a most noble youth, first a monk at St. Eugendus's, then abbot in the monastery of Bèze, asserts that several princes in that age, leaving the vanity of the world, gave themselves up to Christ, and sets count Simon as their standard-bearer in these words: And the head and leader of these was a certain most noble count of the Franks, Simon by name, of count Ralph [*]. He, regarded by the divine mercy, fled the world which fled him and followed Christ calling him. And he sought the monastery of St. Eugendus of the Jura, there to sacrifice himself to Christ. He had sent before him two most illustrious men, the lord Ralph and the lord Franco; but with him he brought the lord Robert, the lord Arnulf and the lord Warner. All these, both most renowned according to the family of the world and most noble according to God, afterwards offered themselves as a holocaust to God.

[133] I do not add the testimonies of more recent writers on this matter, as resting on no other, or at any rate no better, he had been warned of this beforehand in sleep; than the assertions of the ancient writers already given. But the reason why Simon chose the Jura monastery of St. Eugendus before other monasteries, the biographer alone teaches in the following words. When formerly (Simon), still placed in the world, was held by the force of fevers, blessed Arnulf and St. Eugendus himself, and another whose name and face he did not know, appeared to him as he slept in a garden, admonishing him to go thither and, warring for God there, to remain, and, remaining, to be ordained and to be a monk under an abbot. And he, rising at once from his little bed, recovered from his infirmity and cried with a loud voice, saying: I am well; and those three lords who were here, where are they, and whither have they gone? But those of his household who were present, not knowing what he meant, declared that they did not know. The biographer neither assigns the date of this vision nor supplies any chronological note whence the year might be established in which Simon, obeying it, betook himself thither.

[134] Alberic refers it to the year 1076, and Vignier in the Chronicle of Langres seems to have followed him, this withdrawal into the monastery when at the same year he wrote thus: In this very year there was made public the admirable conversion of Simon, the most illustrious and most powerful count of Bar, etc. Chifflet, neglecting Alberic, refutes others according to whom it would have happened much earlier, beginning thus chapter 13 of the Observations, where he asks at what time and under what abbot St. Simon became a monk at Saint-Oyend: The anonymous author of a certain Jura Chronicle, written four hundred years ago, asserts that Simon, count of Champagne, put on the monastic habit in the monastery of St. Eugendus under abbot Wlfred, and then, under his successor abbot Bertrand, having sought a withdrawal into the desert, founded the priory which the common people call of Muthua. Him more recent writers followed, Claude du Saix and Henri Boguet: but all far from the truth. For it is certain that St. Simon's entrance into the monastery of St. Eugendus, which true chronology assigns to the year MLXXVII, and his whole monastic life, which did not complete four full years, fell in the times of abbot Odo.

[135] The falsity of the opinion which Chifflet refutes must be gathered from the Catalogues of the abbots of the Jura, happened more probably in which after the 9th century none occurs by the name

of Wlfred. What Chifflet asserted in his latter words about the time of abbot Odo he then defends against the Chronicle of Bèze of John the monk, whose text, somewhat contrary to his own opinion, he observes to be confusedly written, and explains. But this animadversion of his, which is lengthy enough, I do not bring hither, because by it he intends rather to defend his own chronology of the abbots of the Jura, and to prove that Odo presided over the abbey when Simon betook himself thither, than to determine or establish the year in which this happened, and which from elsewhere seemed to him so certain that he asserted it there baldly: St. Simon entered the monastery at the beginning of the year MLXXVII, without even alleging the arguments or documents of his assertion, which he certainly had. But the chief documents are two Charters already quoted above, of which the one was drawn up by Simon himself in favour of the monastery of St. Arnulf of Crépy in the castle of Crépy on the XI of the Kalends of April in the year of the Incarnate Word MLXXVII: the other by Philip, king of the Franks, for the monastery of Cluny, written in the year from the Lord's Incarnation MLXXVIII. For in the former both the place in which it was written and the title which he gives himself — I, Simon, by the grace of God count — and the rest of the context show that he was then still a layman: but from the second it is clear that in the following year he was a monk, since king Philip expressly says: The lord Simon, lately count, now by God's grace made a monk.

[136] in the year 1077; he had the duke of Burgundy and other And so, these Charters standing, there can be no doubt that in one or other year he became a monk. To the former, namely 1077, the learned now commonly assign it, in particular Chifflet, Bouchet, Mabillon: they do not declare the reason: yet I willingly subscribe to their opinion, if only on this ground, that it is established that in the following year Guy, count of Mâcon, was also a monk, as he himself writes in a Charter in d'Achery's Spicilegium, volume 6 of the first edition, page 457: Be it known to all the faithful of Christ that I, Guy, once count of Mâcon, … betook myself to the memorial of the holy apostles Peter and Paul in the monastery of Cluny, that for the rest, subject there to regular discipline, I might do penance … Done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand and seventy-eight. In the same year likewise Hugh, duke of Burgundy, withdrew to Cluny, as Mabillon proves in volume 5 of the Annals, page 129. But both those princely men conceived that pious purpose at least some time after Simon had carried it into execution, since his example spurred them on, as Alberic testifies and our biographer, whose words are these: Therefore in Flanders, Normandy and the other parts of the Gauls as far as the borders of Germany, the report of so great a Man (Simon) being received, they were filled with astonishment and wondered; since he was known to those regions, beloved of God and so dear to all, that Hugh, duke of Burgundy, and the count of Mâcon and very many of the same rank, inflamed with the affection of piety and with the sweetness of him, laid down their arms and left the world. For who, by his example, would not deeply desire a conversion of manners and change his purpose of life for the better? Nobles alike and commoners, on hearing his name, imitated him.

[137] illustrious men as his imitators. The elogia of Hugh and Guy Mabillon collected from ancient writers in his preliminary Observations on the Life of St. Simon. But Chifflet in his manuscript Observations exhibits a list of those whom the same Simon had as companions or followers of his purpose, yet names no others than those already known to us from the biographer and from John the monk, author of the Chronicle of Bèze. That they were more in number the biographer abundantly signifies, and hence it is further allowed to conjecture, since Hugh alone, duke of Burgundy, had thirty companions: Bidding farewell to the world, (Hugh) with XXX companions withdrew to Cluny in the year of salvation MLXXVIII, and hid himself in a cell. Thus Vignier in the Chronicle of Langres.

add filius*

§ XIII. The Saint's mission to king Philip; his presence at the translation of the sacred Shroud of Compiègne; the peace made by him between William, king of England, and his son Robert. His journey to Rome; the peace likewise made between the supreme Pontiff and the duke of Apulia; a chronological investigation of these things.

He is sent by the abbot to king Philip; Passing untouched most of Simon's deeds in the monastic life — namely his exercises of the virtues, his zeal for prayer, the austerity of his food, his vigils, his afflictings of the body, the benefits obtained by divine favour and the like, which are described clearly enough by the contemporary biographer and are not to be confirmed from elsewhere — we select a few things which need greater discussion or elucidation than could easily be dispatched in the Annotations. The first of this kind occurs at number 20, where, after the biographer had related that the Saint, already for some time a monk, had with the abbot's leave withdrawn into the desert with a few companions, in order to decline the honour paid him by the monks on account of his eminent virtues, he continues thus: But at the same time, at the request of Hugh of good memory, abbot of the Cluniacs, that the blessed Man himself, going into France, should on his behalf address and rebuke Philip, king of the Franks, who was taking away certain things from him, he set out for France at his abbot's command. Now it happened, as he was setting out, at Compiègne, a town of the king, that the Lord's shroud had to be raised and laid more becomingly in a golden chest. Hearing which, the Man of God turned aside a little from the road which seemed straighter, to go thither, and in a short time, the Lord leading him, arrived. And, about to enter the church of blessed Cornelius as if secretly, he was recognized by the people and led to the king, and obtained what he asked. The last things I have contracted into a compendium, because they will presently recur entire.

[139] I brought forward at number 119 and following the diploma of the year 1078, he is present at the translation of the sacred Shroud at Compiègne. in which king Philip says: Every gift which the lord Simon, lately count, now by God's grace made a monk, gave to the church of Cluny, and which by evil counsel I took away from him, I now restore, etc. Was that diploma given on the occasion of which the biographer here treats? For my part I incline much to that opinion. But a difficulty lurks in the things which the same biographer mixes into his narration about Simon's presence at the elevation and translation of the sacred Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was formerly deposited in the church of St. Cornelius at Compiègne by the emperor Charles the Bald, and is preserved down to our times. But since the first, so far as I know, to detect that difficulty was Father Pierre-François Chifflet, and since he set it forth and tried to remove it in the whole of chapter 14 of his Observations under this title — At what time St. Simon was present at the translation of the sacred Shroud of Compiègne, etc. — I exhibit the said chapter to my readers in distinct type, as being his own Work.

[140] Jean-Jacques Chifflet, my brother, in the Historical Critique on the sepulchral Linens of Christ the Saviour, chapter XXVI on the Shroud of Compiègne, describes the Records of the bishop of Soissons, Chifflet's opinion or rather of Antoine Raguet, priest and public notary, given on the XXI of October MDCXVI, on the visitation of the Shroud of Compiègne, in which is enclosed the diploma of Philip I, king of the Franks, given in the year MXCII, Indiction XV, in which the king testifies that he, "at the suppliant admonition of the brethren of the church of Compiègne, and especially at the most frequent entreaty of the most Christian Matilda, queen of the English," transferred the Shroud of Compiègne from the ivory vessel in which the emperor Charles had deposited it, "into another vessel which the aforesaid queen of the English, wonderfully adorned and decorated with gold, gems and most precious stones, had sent to the church of Compiègne." That this was done "on the Sunday Lætare Jerusalem, which is the middle of Lent: an innumerable and infinite multitude of Christians being gathered there." There follow in the diploma the royal largesses towards the church of Compiègne, and the appointment of an anniversary solemnity in the same church in these words: "To the memory therefore of so famous and so celebrated a solemnity it has been appointed and decreed by us and by our bishops, that the aforesaid Sunday of mid-Lent be for all time held and celebrated as solemn and authentic among all the faithful who should return to that same place with every revolution of the years, to obtain the pardon of their sins through the merits of the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian." Antoine Raguet the notary adds that in the name of Foucauld de Bonneval, bishop of Soissons, the sacred Shroud was displayed to be seen by the eyes of many, after it had lain enclosed "for four hundred and twenty-four years," lest any doubt should stick to anyone about the royal records subscribed in that year of Christ MXCII, since the CCCCXXIV years added to this sum reach the year MDCXVI.

[141] about the date Now see the difficulty from the reckoning of the times. Ordericus affirms in book VII of the History, page 647, that Matilda, queen of the English, died on the third of the Nones of November in the year of Christ MLXXXV, Indiction VII. How then, at her MOST FREQUENT ENTREATY, did king Philip in the year MXCII transfer the Shroud into the golden shrine offered by her, when she had ceased to live seven years before? The ancient author of the Life of St. Simon relates in chapter XI [*] that he, at his abbot's command, undertook a journey to king Philip, to reclaim from him something which Hugh, abbot of Cluny, complained had been taken from him: "Now it happened (he says), as he was setting out, at Compiègne, a town of the king, that the Lord's Shroud had to be raised and laid more becomingly in a golden chest. Hearing which, the Man of God turned aside a little from the road which seemed straighter, to go thither, and in a short time, the Lord leading him, arrived, and, entering the church of blessed Cornelius as if secretly to pray, he is at once recognized by certain persons who were present at the festival: and soon, the report flying about, the rumour is taken up in the ears of the crowd: the voice of the people and the shout of the rejoicing throng is raised: Simon is cried by almost all; Simon is gazed upon in rivalry; and so he is with difficulty withdrawn (the crowd pressing) to the king's palace. Whom the king, who had lately arrived, gazing upon most attentively, received with fully due honour, and, addressing him kindly, most willingly promised that he was prepared to comply if he should ask anything of him: but he, not unmindful of his petition, made known what he was seeking for himself, and obtained it as he had asked."

[142] To these objections I see that two things can be replied. of the said First, that the diploma of king Philip bound up with the records written in the year MDCXVI is a copy: that in the original the notes of time were either absent or obliterated by age; and that the notary in supplying them by conjecture strayed from the truth, and thus ascribed that translation to the thirteenth year after it had been made; since it was unknown to him that Matilda, queen of the English, had departed this life in the year MLXXXV, and holy Simon, from a count a monk, the beholder of that translation, in the year MLXXX. I confess indeed that the hallucinations of archivists in copying the copies of older diplomas are frequent. But why, pray, did this notary subscribe to these records the year MXCII rather than any other whatever? Why too did he join to the year MXCII the Indiction XV, which agrees excellently with it?

[143] To me therefore it seems more likely that the sacred Shroud was altogether transferred from the ivory casket into the golden chest, translation the gift of Matilda, queen of the English, in the year of Christ MLXXIX, in the presence

of St. Simon: but that the royal diploma was given in the year MXCII; because in that year (after that sacred pledge had become more famous by the concourse of peoples and by the many benefits obtained from God through it) king Philip, having consulted on that matter some bishops of his kingdom, ordained that that Sunday of mid-Lent should for all following years be assigned to the anniversary solemnity of the Shroud of Compiègne: and moreover enriched the church of the holy Cornelius and Cyprian with many gifts and privileges: yet that in that diploma there is set forth first the course of the Shroud's translation into the golden shrine, because that translation, made thirteen years before, had given occasion for these benefactions: but that then it was again exhibited to be seen by a great multitude, and thereafter remained untouched: so that the public notary wrote without falsehood that it, when it was inspected in the year MDCXVI, had before lain enclosed for four hundred and twenty-four whole years. Thus Chifflet, whose endeavour to reconcile the translation of the sacred Shroud mentioned in the diploma with the age of Simon, and so to preserve the credit and authority of the biographer whole and entire, I praise and embrace, chiefly because I do not see what interest the biographer had in asserting Simon's presence at the translation, had he not known it from trustworthy witnesses.

[144] Yet I do not equally adhere to all Chifflet's particulars, which bring no change to the principal question. and ours. The Saint goes to the king of England And first indeed, for the reason indicated above, it appears to me not unlike the truth that the translation was made one year earlier than he lays down, namely in the year 1078. Secondly, I should not dare to prolong the life of Matilda, queen of the English, as far as the year 1085, since the other writers commonly bind her death to the year 1083. Ordericus indeed mentions her at 1085, but does not assert determinately that it happened then: nay, the chronological notes which Chifflet took from Ordericus — the III of the Nones of November, Indiction VII — belong to the year 1083, since in that year from the month of September the VII Indiction had begun. Now let us resume the thread of the history. Having obtained from king Philip what he had asked for the community of Cluny, Simon, before returning to the monastery, as the biographer testifies, visited king William and queen Matilda in Normandy, and — what was perhaps the chief cause of his going thither — made peace between William himself and Robert his elder son.

[145] and reconciles him with his son; Alford in the Annals of the English church, citing Matthew Paris, refers the beginnings of their discord to the year 1075: but supposes it to have been extinguished, or at least lulled, in the year 1079, where, quoting from the same Paris the following: In the year of the Lord one thousand and seventy-nine, William, king of the English, led a numerous army into Wales and subjugated it to himself, and received homage and fealty from the petty kings of that dominion; he subjoins this: There had come opportunely at that time from Normandy Robert, the firstborn of king William, a man noble in the exercise of arms and in warlike valour. He at his father's command is set against Malcolm, etc. Further, the richer fruits of the journey then undertaken by Simon, passed over in silence by the biographer, the oft-cited abbot Guibert committed to writing in his own Life, writing thus: Some time having elapsed after his taking the monastic habit, he made a return to France; and the purity of his discourse, and the humility of his mind which he bore in his face, so animated so many and such great men and women, that countless companies of both sexes were at that time brought together to follow that path of his, and from every quarter very many were summoned to that purpose by the example of his name. Indeed the zeal of the Man greatly stirred up a swarm of knightly men.

[146] he is summoned to Rome; While Simon, returned to his own, had resumed in his desert the exercises of the solitary life, interrupted for a while, letters came from Pope Gregory VII to the monastery of St. Eugendus, in which the abbot was ordered to direct Simon to Rome: and when delay was interposed, the Pontiff a second time issued an edict by letters that, unless he should be quick in sending Simon with all speed, the abbot and the whole congregation should cease from the spiritual office. He was therefore sent to the City with some companions, as the biographer relates, yet with no note of time added from which you might determine the year. Hence more recent writers have commonly refrained from fixing the date of the mission; we have one, Bouchet, who fixed the year 1080. But since, according to Bouchet's own opinion, in that year on the day before the Kalends of October the Saint died at Rome, the things which the biographer relates to have happened while he was staying in Italy seem to require a somewhat longer stay there. For after the Pontiff had joyfully received him on his arrival, a house fit for dwelling is chosen for him beside the church of the blessed virgin Thecla: and while he lived there most holily and gave himself to prayer, the whole company of his servants was taken away by death on account of the unhealthiness of the place, only two monks being left, of whom one returned to the monastery, but the other, serving him until the end of his life, endured with him the unevenness of the City.

[147] [he makes peace between the Pope and the duke of Apulia: the opinions of various men] After this the same biographer says that Simon was sent by the Pontiff into Apulia, and that he reconciled its prince Robert Guiscard with the Pontiff, and on the journey induced almost sixty knights or nobles to embrace the monastic life. These things, I say, seem to require a longer stay in Italy, and consequently an earlier departure from his monastery; especially if what the biographer relates in the last place about the peace made through Simon between the Pontiff and Robert Guiscard is also later in time than the rest. For that peace was confirmed before the month of July of the said year 1080, as Chifflet lays down with Baronius in chapter 15 of his Observations, saying: About Robert Guiscard reconciled to the Roman Church through St. Simon, Baronius has this at the year of Christ MLXXX, number XXXV: "On the third of the Kalends of July that Robert Guiscard, whom you have hitherto heard of as the implacable enemy of the Roman Church and invader of its goods, and for that reason often excommunicated by the same Pontiff" (Gregory VII) "in councils held at Rome, coming of his own accord submitted himself to the same Pope Gregory: and showing himself the most faithful defender both of him and of the whole Roman Church, took to him the oath of fealty in these words according to the customary formulas: I, Robert, etc." — which he reports from the Register of Gregory VII, book VIII, after the first letter given in the year MLXXX, the seventh [*] of his Pontificate, Indiction III. Who was the fisher of this great fish, who enclosed him in his net in the word of the Lord, Baronius would have said, had he known holy Simon, whose deeds came to light long after Baronius's death from the secret archives of some churches.

[148] Baronius's opinion about the date of the peace's confirmation Pagi attacked in his Critica at the year 1077, about the time at which these things happened, to which he contends it must be attached; but Baronius was afterwards strenuously defended by Muratori in the Annals of Italy at the year 1080, where, besides other arguments opposed to Pagi's Critica, he cites a short Norman Chronicle, which he published in volume 5 of the Rerum Italicarum, and which, carried from the year 1041 to 1085 and written before the year 1127, has this at page 278: In the year MLXXX duke Robert again entered Taranto and Castanetum. Afterwards he went with his army to Bari and put Petronius to flight, and again took it with the city of Trani. And he was made friends with Pope Gregory in the month of June, and there was confirmed to him by him all the land which duke Robert held in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. For the rest, Alberic in his Chronicle mentions Simon's journey to Robert Guiscard only at the year 1081, but sets before it other deeds of Guiscard which are later than the peace made with Gregory VII; wherefore it may be believed that he did not attach everything to its own time in strict order. Yet I copy the words: Simon therefore, a holy man, summoned by the Pope and sent to the same prince of Apulia, brought him to the lord Pope, and on the same journey converted sixty knights from the world to God, and, returning, was gratefully received by the Pope.

[149] Mabillon in his preliminary Observations on the Life of Simon thinks that Alberic's reckonings should be kept; are reported. but perceiving that they cannot stand with the testimonies of other ancients, none of whom allows the peace of Robert with Pope Gregory to be deferred to the year 1081, he tried to expound the words both of the biographer and of Alberic, not of that first and famous pacification, which he acknowledges to have been made in the year 1080, but of some dissensions of lighter moment afterwards removed by Simon's work between the supreme Pontiff and the prince of Apulia. But let him speak himself: Yet he (the biographer) is not contrary to Alberic in relating that Simon was summoned by Gregory, Roman Pontiff, to settle some quarrels which had blazed up between him and Robert, duke of Apulia, lest on occasion of those quarrels something adverse should happen to the city of Rome. For all these things can aptly be recalled to the year MLXXXI and the following, provided that those quarrels which Simon is recorded to have settled between the Pontiff and duke Robert be said to have been not very grave. For these had been altogether lulled from the year MLXXX: but perhaps that author wished to indicate certain lighter dissensions, on account of which Gregory feared lest, deprived of Robert's help, he should be utterly overwhelmed by the emperor Henry, most hostile to him. And indeed that Gregory feared this is plain from the letters given to Desiderius, Cardinal and abbot of Monte Cassino, in Baronius at the year MLXXXI, in which the Pontiff asserts that Henry had moved every stone, even promising his own daughter to Robert as wife, to draw him over to his side. To that sense Mabillon probably drew the biographer's words, so that Alberic's chronology might be found more accurate, and therefore of greater authority in the death of Simon reported at the year 1082, which opinion Mabillon adopted, and which we shall examine in the following §.

* here number 20

read octavo*

§ XIV. The year and day of his death; his obsequies; burial; epitaph; the illustrious family named from him.

Simon's death, which some with Alberic The learned are divided into two classes about Simon's last year: the oft-cited Chifflet and Bouchet, to whom Chastelain in the universal Martyrology has acceded, fix his death in 1080; Mabillon, the writers of the Literary History of France, and others defer it to the year 1082. The former declare their opinion baldly as though certain, and bring forward no arguments. The latter, in particular Mabillon, support theirs by the authority of Alberic, who in fact, as I said just now, speaks of Simon's death only at the said year 1082, saying: When Simon, a holy man, asked leave to return to the monastery, the supreme Pontiff said: It is not in my power that you should return; but go into the oratory of blessed Peter, and inquire in prayer whatever he may have of will in this matter. He went and prayed one night, and thereupon, being at once seized with infirmity, returned to his bed. The supreme Pontiff returned [*], absolved him from his sins, blessed him, and ordered that he be buried among the Apostolic ones,

who, strengthened by the Lord's Sacraments, on the day before the Kalends of October rendered his spirit to God.

[151] marked in the year 1082, It is again strange why Chifflet, who elsewhere testifies that he had at hand various manuscript copies of Alberic's Chronicle, observed nothing or set down nothing in answer to this passage, contrary to his own opinion. Perhaps the authority of Alberic in a chronological matter seemed to him slight, as reporting deeds here and there out of their place; which indeed I noted that he did at the year 1081 in the preceding §, and which I suspect he did again at this year 1082 from what he sets before the words just given. For, citing Sigebert of Gembloux, he quotes the following as received from him: The emperor Henry, having stormed the cities and castles which were against him on Hildebrand's side, besieged the Leonine City of Rome. Hearing which, the aforesaid Guiscard, father of Bohemond, made for Rome, and Henry, terrified by his fame, retired with Guibert, his falsely elected Pope. The former part, about the siege of the Leonine City by Henry, Sigebert truly has at the year 1082; but about Robert Guiscard or his going to Rome not a word: Alberic therefore added these things from other writers, and indeed out of their place; since they belong to the year 1084, when Robert freed Gregory VII, besieged by Henry in the castle of Sant' Angelo.

[152] Reckonings heaped together in this less accurate manner were probably, I say, the cause why Chifflet neglected the cited passage of Alberic: nor indeed do they suffice for me we, by an argument drawn to subscribe to the opinion of Mabillon and his followers; especially when an argument occurs altogether opposed to it, but hitherto brought forward by no one that I know. And I draw it from the Life of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, which Chifflet does not seem to have had, and which he certainly did not use here; but whose authority Mabillon abundantly acknowledged both in volume 5 of the Annals and in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, part 2 of Century 6, where he printed and illustrated it as written by the contemporary abbot Hariulf and adopted by Lisiard, bishop of Soissons, likewise a contemporary: which we too did in volume III of August at the XV day. According to the author of this Life, Arnulf was first a monk and recluse in the monastery of St. Medard at Soissons, then was made abbot, and at length, disturbances having arisen, of his own accord gave up his dignity and shut himself up in his former cell, and there remained until the council of Meaux, which Mabillon in his Annals assigns to the year 1080, our Longueval in the History of the Gallican church more probably to 1081. Summoned to this council from his cell, Arnulf was elected bishop of the church of Soissons. Thence he returned to his own monastery of St. Medard, to await the time appointed for his consecration: at length he went to Hugh, prelate of the church of Die and legate of the Apostolic See, and on the Sunday before the Lord's Nativity, which fell on the XIIII of the Kalends of January, he was consecrated bishop, that is, in the year 1081, as all now confess with Mabillon; nor is St. Arnulf read to have afterwards returned to his monastery of St. Medard.

[153] These things being premised, the studious reader will presently perceive the force of our argument. from the Life of St. Arnulf, The death of St. Simon was revealed to St. Arnulf at the very hour at which it happened. At what time? Let Mabillon say, in his preliminary Observations on Simon's Life: It is read in the Life of St. Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, which we shall publish below in its place, that to that same holy prelate, THEN A RECLUSE, Simon's death was divinely revealed. What is to be concluded thence? Then a recluse; therefore before St. Arnulf's episcopal consecration; therefore before the XIV of the Kalends of January, or the XIX day of December of the year 1081; therefore a notable time before the XXX day of September of the year 1082, which Mabillon lays down as Simon's last. I do not know whether afterwards the said author felt some difficulty here: for in his Annals he changed the phrase, calling Arnulf, whom before he had called then a recluse, then bishop: His (Simon's) death St. Arnulf, THEN BISHOP of Soissons, is related to have learned from heaven at the very hour. That he was bishop in the year 1082, at which Mabillon records these things, no one will deny; but that he was bishop when he learned Simon's death, I doubt whether anyone will admit, whether he regard the order kept by Hariulf in the Life of St. Arnulf, or read his words reporting the revelation made to St. Arnulf.

[154] That Work is divided into three books, in the last chapters of the first of which the author relates various things then a recluse, afterwards a bishop, which happened to St. Arnulf when, after abdicating the government of the abbey, he was a recluse in his cell, and among them the vision about the death of count Simon, and the counsel which he ordered to be reported by messengers to Bertha, queen of the Franks, hitherto barren, for obtaining fruitfulness from God. In the second book he at last begins to treat of the death of Theobald, bishop of Soissons, of the election of Arnulf in the council of Meaux, and of the birth of Louis, the firstborn of queen Bertha, the year being also expressly marked, as follows: But in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand LXXXI was born the future king Louis, obtained by the prayers and merits of this holy Arnulf, who — would that, to gain a good end, he may be helped by the suffrage of the same Saint. You have the order of narration kept by Hariulf; read now his elogium of St. Simon mentioned several times, and judge whether the revelation made to St. Arnulf about his death can be referred to his episcopate. The former part of the elogium I quoted at number 132; the rest I here append. Finally, warring for God for a few years, (St. Simon) stretching himself manfully in simplicity and humility of heart, and in continual contrition of body, and in the exercise of holy virtues, by God's favour was in a short time made perfect, and, since his soul was pleasing to God, it was led out of the prison of the world, to shine among the living stones in the diadem of heaven.

[155] written and approved But at the very hour in which, loosed from the flesh, he deserved to pass to blessed rest, the holy man Arnulf, A RECLUSE IN HIS OWN CELL, was raised up in an ecstasy of mind. And, by God's gift, he saw all the things which were being done about the honourable man Simon, formerly a count, now a monk. And when after the vision he had returned to himself, he hastened to call the brethren, to tell them the grace of so great a vision. The brethren come, to whom he announced, saying: Go, brethren, in haste; announce to the abbot and the brethren that the lord Simon, formerly count of Vermandois, has today departed from this life; and let the abbot order the Office to be celebrated quickly for the passing of so great a Man.

[156] by contemporaries, we fix in the year 1080, The monks, astounded, began to hesitate, greatly doubting such a command: yet they go to the abbot and announce what they had heard. He, astounded, wonders the more, and rising hastens to the Recluse: he inquires, testing him, what he had commanded []. Then the man of God says: If I had ever brought you anything false or uncertain, it would be just that you should believe us with more difficulty. But now, since you have not yet found falsehood of words in me, why are you of such hardness in believing that you think me as it were mad about uncertain things? Note the day, note the hour, and you will find that it is or was so, as it is manifest to me []. Then the abbot in haste and the assembly of the brethren enter the church, the bells are rung, the psalms are sung, and in its order the Office of the dead is celebrated. Meanwhile their minds were in suspense, thinking that, being deluded, they were being laughed at; when behold, within a month of days a messenger flies up, saying that the lord Simon had died on that day and at that same hour at which it had been shown beforehand about him to Arnulf, the man of God. Thus Hariulf, book 1, chapter 24 of the ancient division, among us in volume III of August, page 239 and following, and in Mabillon, part 2 of Century 6 of the Acts of the Order of St. Benedict, page 523: but here some things are read in a different way, as I have noted in the margin, and a few things are omitted, which I have enclosed in brackets. I observe no more: from the arguments brought forward let the learned reader determine which authority ought to prevail — that of Alberic, an author a century and a half later; or that of Hariulf and Lisiard, contemporary writers: I meanwhile have marked Simon's death in the year MLXXX.

[157] on the 30th day of September according to the biographer, There is also some disagreement among modern writers about the day of his death: by most it is put at the XXX of September, and these have as their leader the biographer, saying in express words: On the day before the Kalends of October he rendered his spirit to God. Chastelain in the universal Martyrology refers it to the XXIX, which is also Chifflet's opinion, who writes in chapter 17 of his Observations: In the same year (1080) on the third of the Kalends of October St. Simon dies piously and holily at Rome. He gives his reason in the preceding chapter; namely because in the Necrology of St. Eugendus is read: On the third of the Kalends of October died Simon, count of Champagne, a monk of our Congregation. Chifflet finally adds: We think that in his Life the day of his burial is designated, which most call the deposition; but in the Necrology the day on which his happy soul was loosed from the bonds of the body. I do not know, I confess, a fitter way of reconciling two ancient monuments seemingly contrary to one another, so long as an equality of value and weight is found in both; but that equality is not sufficiently ascertained by me. The date and authority of the biographer are sufficiently known, but not so of the author of the Necrology; who, as he improperly — which Chifflet will not deny — called Simon count of Champagne, so perhaps did not note his death on its proper day; whether this was done from inadvertence or from ignorance: since, according to what was said before, in the monastery of St. Eugendus the annual festivity of St. Simon is not kept on the day of his death, but on the third of October, on account of the concurrence of other Offices. As regards Chastelain, we believe indeed that there was no lack of a cause why he changed the day; but since he does not declare it, we cannot judge whether it is other or stronger than Chifflet's; and therefore we do not think we should depart from the biographer.

[158] The things which followed Simon's death at Rome — his obsequies, burial, epitaph; namely the consternation of the whole City, the celebrity of the obsequies, at which there were present with the whole clergy bishops, abbots, religious and a vast multitude of people; the carrying of the bier by the princes of Rome to the place of burial assigned to him by Gregory VII among the supreme Pontiffs, the magnificence of the tomb erected at the expense of Matilda, queen of the English, and the like, described by the biographer — need no elucidation here. But the epitaph, which is subjoined to all copies of the Life, both our manuscripts and the printed ones, I transfer hither: because, although it was probably preserved for posterity by the biographer, yet it had another author, and him indeed most illustrious both in learning and in dignity, namely Odo, then Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, afterwards Pontiff of that same universal Church, Urban II: as is clear from the title:

The Epitaph of count Simon, Written on his pyramid by the lord Pope Urban, surnamed Odo.

Simon by name, of the illustrious blood of my forefathers, I was a great part of the nobles of the Franks.

A lover of poverty, I left my country and the world, Setting Christ before all riches. Afterwards to the Apostolic court of the heavenly Prince The surpassing love of so great a Father drove me. That under his leading I may at last deserve to be raised above the stars, I lodge here, buried before the sacred doors.

[159] There follow presently in most copies six hexameter verses, poems on his death, which I do not tear from their place, because I think them the biographer's own offspring. More were added by Mabillon, which a little after the blessed Man's death Fulcoius, subdeacon of Meaux, wrote under the name of an epitaph; the poet played especially upon the name of Simon, shared by him with Simon Peter, the Prince of the Apostles; for the rest he neither avoided obscurity nor altogether put off the barbarism of his age.

In the fold of the Prince, Simon in Simon's hall, With cross, with wallet, now among the true sheepfolds, Despises the assault, whose wisdom tends upward; And the things that are above the earth he has lately Resolved to scorn, fleeing the snares and nets of the world; Through cultivations, through wealth, through horses, through darts, through swords, Through family and beauty, through fields, through towns, he came to Rome, And from Rome he claps above the halls of heaven. So Peter of the rock sends the sheepfold through the sheepfolds, A shepherd to the great shepherd, whom he entrusted as a lamb, A lamb rests in the lamb, a guardian in the guardian. Peter reigns with the rock, Simon with Simon, May the commonwealth be the same, one King, that the flock too be the same. Gaul, which bore him, whom born and whom reborn She thus did not keep, grieves as a mother at wealth and nobility Despised; unless he were captured by the love Of the heavenly homeland, whither faithful Rome sends him; She envies him to Rome, yet she sends small funeral gifts, Tears and songs, that he may not despise her.

[160] in which he died at no advanced age: In what year of his age our Saint died, neither the biographer noted nor any other of the ancient writers, nor have I hitherto met with anyone among the moderns who has dug it out of ancient documents. Yet if we gather up the things discussed in this Commentary, we shall easily grasp that he was not advanced in years. I select one from which this appears clearly. When after the death of Ralph, count of Crépy, Philip king of the Franks assailed his son, our Simon, with arms, he was, as the biographer testifies, a Youth, and, as abbot Guibert testifies, a young lad: but Ralph died, according to Chifflet's opinion, which seemed to us more probable than Bouchet's, who lays down 1074 — died, I say, in the year 1072, and Simon in 1080, when therefore he perhaps did not exceed his thirtieth year of age, and probably had not reached his fortieth. For the rest, when in §1 I brought forward the reasons why I thought the title of Saint rather than of Blessed should be given to Simon, I mentioned a most illustrious family in the Gauls which drew its origin from his sister and down to our times has been named from St. Simon's name; and I promised that this would be shown more fully elsewhere; now I perform it.

[161] The origin of the family Various French writers have treated this matter, yet I exhibit two before the rest, Adrien de la Morlière in the Illustrious families of Picardy and our Chifflet in his manuscript Observations: the former because what he judges about the name and beginnings of the family of Saint-Simon agrees excellently with what we said in §1; the latter, lest what he diligently collected from others should perish unpublished. Morlière begins thus in French at page 196: The family of Saint-Simon arises in direct line from the ancient counts of Vermandois: hence, even were there no other reason, it would demand a place from me among our illustrious men; since the chief men of that stock possessed our city before all others under the title of counts of Amiens, as I showed in the first book, treating of the origin of our counts. It takes its name (the family of Saint-Simon) from a village between Ham and Fère (they are towns of Picardy, commonly Han or Ham and la Fère), and that village itself, as I believe, from Simon, the only son of Ralph of Crépy, count of Amiens, of Bar-sur-Aube and of Mantes, who embraced the religious life at Saint-Claude in Burgundy and afterwards became a Saint, leaving his inheritance to the two sisters he had, of whom the elder, Adela or Aleydis (Alix), married Herbert, count of Vermandois. Of these, besides Adela or Aleydis, the wife of Hugh the Great, he says was born Odo, who was disinherited, but whose son named Farius, and his grandson John, established the family of Saint-Simon, on the testimony of lord du Tillet, whom he cites.

[162] Chifflet in chapter 8 of the Observations relates this: There is a village with a castle in Vermandois, called of Saint-Simon, commonly called Saint-Simon, not far from Avenacum [], almost equally distant between la Fère and Saint-Quentin. From this castle a name was given to the noble family which even now continues in its descendants. Jean du Tillet in the Branch of Vermandois asserts that Alais of Vermandois, wife of Hugh the Great, brother of king Philip, had a brother Odo, whom on account of weakness of mind the barons or magnates of the province determined should be disinherited: who yet, having joined to himself in marriage the daughter of a certain knight of Vermandois (that is, of a noble man, as others put it), had by her a son named Farius, who was the father of John of Saint-Simon, the head of the family of that name. Nevertheless the Sainte-Marthes in book X of the Royal genealogy*, under Herbert IV, count of Vermandois, affirm that there are extant in the royal archive records drawn up in the time of Philip Augustus, in which it is reported that Odo, son of count Herbert, had a second son surnamed Farinus, who was the begetter of John of Saint-Simon.

[163] Whence there arises the series of this family, which lord du Bouchet sent to me, and with great splendour a man renowned among the few genealogists of our age, and most friendly to me; to whose goodwill I profess that I owe very many other things also, especially such as concern the genealogical histories of princely families.

Scheme of the family of the nobles of Saint-Simon.

Herbert IV, count of Vermandois, whose wife was N. of Crépy, sister of St. Simon.

There follow then the Lords of Saint-Simon, with the names of brothers also added, as they stand in Moreri's Historical Dictionary at the word Saint-Simon, in this order: Odo II, surnamed Farinus; John I; John II; Simon; James; James II, who died unmarried before the year MCCCXXXIV, whom his heiress Margaret succeeded, given in marriage to Matthew de Rouvroy, surnamed the One-eyed, lord of Plessis-Saint-Just, MCCCXXXIV: on this condition, that the children born of this marriage should be called of Saint-Simon and should use the ancestral shield of that same family.

[164] From Matthew and Margaret came others and others down to our age: continued down to our times. among whom there shone before the rest (Claude) lord of Saint-Simon, master of the royal stable, honoured with the title of duke by the most Christian king Louis XIII, and in the year MDCXXXIII by the same king's favour enrolled in the order of the knights of the Holy Spirit. What Chifflet says here in general may be seen more explicitly in the said Dictionary of Moreri; where there is extant an ample series of the lords of Saint-Simon who were renowned in past centuries and in this present one also, genealogically deduced from the said Matthew de Rouvroy and Margaret of Saint-Simon, and distributed into various branches. There the curious reader will find the lords of Saint-Simon rulers of very many places; counts, marquises, dukes and Peers of France; knights of the royal Orders; grandees of Spain of the first class; and others distinguished with courtly, military and ecclesiastical dignities. The ancient badge of that family is (the words are Chifflet's, with which we close our Commentary) on a black field a silver Cross, charged with five red shells. In which the Cross seems to designate the monastic profession; the black field the Benedictine dress; the shells some pious pilgrimage of someone of that race: and perhaps the two journeys to Rome of holy Simon himself, the earlier while still a Count living in the world, the other as a monk, summoned to Rome by the Pontiff; whence also he flew away to the heavenly ones.

others, affuit*

Mabillon, quis mandaverit*

ibid. manifestatum*

Avene*

LIFE

By a contemporary author

From manuscripts and printed texts.

Simon, count and monk, at Rome. (S.)

BHL Number: 7757

BY A CONTEMPORARY

PROLOGUE.

The cause of writing. Since the entreaty and the need of certain men of God presses us to speak something of the acts of the blessed man Simon for the profit of the hearers, gathering his several deeds and recognizing what is certain, we have taken care to set them forth in words and to assign them both in writings and in words. For it is worthy that what he accomplished in deed should be displayed in letters, whose life could be compared with that of no man in this age. Rightly is the Lord, as it is written, proclaimed wonderful in his Saints. For his Spirit breathes where it will: those whom it finds perverse it turns away from perversity, and makes them simple in work, innocent in mind, sweet in speech, and at once both companions and helpers of God's holy Church. But in whom is the Lord declared more wonderful than in Simon? For he saw a wolf, and made him a most gentle lamb; a ravener, and destined him to be a sheep of innocence; and because in Simon he is declared wonderful, his wonders which he deigned to show in Simon must not be suppressed in silence.

PART I.

The Saint's birth; youth; a grave temptation overcome: There was then a certain man named Simon, wonderful in life, excellent in manners, and distinguished in family. First a consul and chief officer of the king of the Franks, he was afterwards made a most approved monk. His father was called Ralph, most powerful in riches and in strength, his mother Adela ^a. How therefore he brought his purpose of faith to the accomplishment of action, the order of the narration will show more clearly. He therefore, when already in the first flower of youth he excelled many in the military art, and gaped after almost wholly the things which are of the world, by chance one day, having gone out into a field to walk, holding a hawk in his hand, let it fly to catch and take a bird; but it, taking nothing, was disappointed. Upon which deed (as he himself used to relate) there followed such and so perverse a thought that he purposed not to love all that is good, and in no way to hate evil: as is found written of blessed Benedict ^b; because, when the bird flew away, he is most sharply bitten by the tooth of unclean suggestion [*]. But by the grace of the Holy Spirit that perversity then suddenly vanished, so that what was diabolical and what he had before loved wholly displeased him; and taking there the beginning of a holy way of life, he had good continually in his will, although, mingled with worldly men, he could not fulfil it in deed.

[3] But when he was bereaved of both parents ^c, Philip, king of the Franks, moved by a spirit of malignity, the death of his parents; the war with king Philip; eager to snatch away this man's inheritance to which he had succeeded by right, thinking that as a Youth alone, without counsel, and without the help of parents, he could easily be overcome, first contrives to attack him with snares, then in open war [*] stirs up a tempest. For the king himself began to destroy the villages with fire, plunder and the sword; to scatter in every way he could the estates, the towns, and

whatever seemed to be his. But he, intrepid, trusting in the Lord, rousing himself against him (for [*] to this, that he should do evil, he was drawn unwillingly), girds himself and prepares to resist stoutly. For he stirs up his people, and like a gnashing lion, though grieving in heart, he troubles and lays waste what he finds in the king's power: and declares that he will by no means go back until he possesses his own.

[4] And who [] would not wonder at the fullness of God's goodness in him? the translation of his father's body; Behold, placed amid so many scourges, hindered by the business of wars, yet grieving for his father now dead (since he remembered that, while he still lived, being too intent on worldly things, he had been grievously entangled, as he knew, in the desires of the world, and had snatched by force from its possessor a certain castle ^d which [] he had prepared as a place of burial for himself, and had held it as his own), he consulted [] the Roman Pontiff by a messenger as to what he should do about this, and how he could help his father who had so died. But Pope Gregory, who was called Hildebrand, piously took care to command that he be taken away entirely from the place which he had unjustly carried off, and that the solemnities of Masses and a bounty of alms be humbly offered to God for his soul. And Simon, kindly receiving the command, obeyed in all that had been set before him: namely removing the body, and endowing [] most bountifully ^f from his own means the church which is called blessed Arnulf's, at the castle of Crépy ^e, where it was translated; and he most amply distributed the necessaries of life to widows, orphans and all the needy.

[5] This is true faith, and this is a most firm love, in which not the carnal life but the perpetual life is thought of; the Saint's various virtues; not the flesh that is to die, but the soul that will live for ever, is preferred. Behold [], the Man of God, terrified with fear at this deed ^g, if he had before judged the world contemptible, then judged it horrible; and if in anything he had loved it, he thoroughly taught that it must be fled like a venomous snake: and although outwardly he was held by worldly contest and the business of war, yet inwardly, serving the Lord's warfare, he bore the Lord's arms. For when, involved for nearly three years in military labour, his flesh had no rest, yet at night, not at all held back by the weariness of arms, content with a single companion, he would go to the thresholds of the churches and rejoiced always to be present at Matins. If he found anywhere a monk, cleric or pilgrim famous for religion, he supplied the necessaries of bodily life and commended himself to his prayers. In fastings and in bounty of alms he excelled: for the meat, the seasoned foods, the spiced dishes and the rest of that kind which were set upon the table [], while others believed that he was filling himself, he, hungering, distributed to the poor, of whom he never lacked. Clothed too outwardly in a variety of garments, he macerated his body with a rough hair-shirt.

[6] the journey to Rome and his dealings with the supreme Pontiff; Meanwhile, while the region is consumed by the devastation of the king and of himself, and men are driven from their own dwellings, he embraces fear for his misdeeds. Presently, deferring the contests of war for a time, he resolves to visit [] the dwellings of the holy apostles, namely Peter and Paul, and to go to the lord Pope Gregory that he might enjoin penance on him. And without delay, all things being prepared that are necessary for a traveller, he arrived at Rome, the Lord leading him, and finding there the Prelate of the holy Apostolic See, he made known what he sought. But he did not at once acquiesce in his petition: unless he should first lay down his arms, he said, the absolution of one who resisted would be void []. Then the man of the Lord, Simon, standing a little in doubt, yet mindful of that Evangelical precept, "He who does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple," promises at once that he will do whatever he should command. The Prelate therefore, having commanded [] the giving up of his arms [], enjoins penance, and retained part of what he enjoined upon himself, and distributed part to two most religious men who were then present: and so, absolving him from his guilt and sending him back to his own, he clothed him again in the arms of which he had stripped him, and again committed to him the land to be governed until he should restore peace with the king, appointing also a guardianship of good report and of the highest authority; namely Hugh, bishop of Die, who then discharged the office of legate in the Gauls, and the abbot of the Cluniacs ^h, to whose teaching and obedience being subject he might be rendered instructed in the divine law.

[7] his return into France, peace with the king; a marriage attempted, Returning therefore, filled with holy gladness, attacking the king again, he embraces the struggle like an excellent soldier, and until he should stand forth victor, though unwillingly, he is by no means released from the business of war ⁱ. But at last, the region being depopulated and both sides weighed down by the heavy burden of toil, counsel of peace is conceived; a conference is appointed by both. What more? An assembly of nobles is held, judgment is given by the wise, the inheritance which had by right fallen to him is adjudged and restored to Simon; peace and concord are confirmed. Peace therefore being restored, and all things being set in order which through the length of the war seemed disordered, a wife is chosen for him, of elegant form, of most beautiful face, noble in family, who seemed second to none in the whole region of Auvergne. But he, as though rejoicing in such things, that he might wholly cover the good that lay hid in him, announces that he will go thither, and at once taking the road he set out.

[8] a pious conversation with his betrothed, and her Arriving there, by God's disposition, he is honourably received by the father of his betrothed, namely the consul Heldebert ^k, and staying there some time, after words befitting such a deed, faith being given and received, he affirms that he will take her, unless it should be otherwise arranged, and so, the day of the marriage being appointed, he returned with joy to his own land. Behold, the appointed day draws near, a multitude of magnates is summoned, a variety of ornament is sought, and all things being disposed in order, seeking again the region of Auvergne, he returns, as was fitting, to the promised covenant: presently, as they draw near, the shout of the crowd crying out is taken up, and the betrothed, offering kisses to Simon as he comes, embraces him. Who would not be astounded at the hearing? Who, moved by such sweetness, would not weep? Kisses were given seasoned with holiness; embraces were entwined with lust put far away: and while others believed that their words were filled with wanton mirth, the Man of the Lord was planting in her heart the word of preaching and sweet conversations of life, that both might renounce the world. And without delay, acquiescing in his admonitions, she vowed to receive the habit of religion and to become a nun.

[9] On the following night therefore the blessed Man, her father and the rest not knowing, flight to a monastery of virgins with two colleagues joined to him in conversion and in nearness of family, sending her to the monastery which is called La Chaise-Dieu ^l, determined that she should dwell there. There at once, their secular dress being changed, the three together take the habit of monastic profession. Of whom one, excelling in religiousness, was afterwards ordained bishop of the city of Bourges ^m; the other, abiding in humility, remained long in the monastery, giving himself to religion. But the lady, devoted to God and living most holily, survived many years after. At this the father, awakened from sleep, believing that his daughter, held by a harlot's love, had followed some pander, thought himself deluded. Then sad and wailing, summoning Simon, he addresses him as though he were guilty of this deed: O most sweet Youth, what I am to do, what I am to make of it, I utterly know not! I have betrayed you, I have brought snares upon you who were entrusted to my faith and summoned to us over a long space of lands, I am cheated of the prize which I promised; for what was promised has been carried off; but I did not know it: spare therefore, spare one who offends unwittingly.

[10] But he, keeping gladness in his heart, and outwardly as it were consoling his grief, and the profession of the religious life. said: Do not, my lord, do not be sad: whom she has loved the more, him she follows the more diligently: and if I have become dearer to you, I am perhaps of little worth to her. These things said, having received leave from him, he hastened back into France: and what his daughter had done, and how she had vowed herself a nun [], he took care to make known to Hildebert by a messenger. O Man worthy of all praise! To whom shall I better call him like than to holy Alexius ⁿ? For he too, with his bride, when he had already entered the bridal chamber, both being about to take their rest together, just as Simon did, brought in the word of preaching, warning her to shun luxury and to keep chastity. And she, obeying the words of him who admonished her, vowing herself a virgin, consecrated the purity of her flesh to the Lord ^o. Thus the blessed man with the hand of holy address wiped away the deadly contagion of unclean depravity; then he himself [], neglecting his father's delights, whose greatness seemed infinite, withdrew secretly at that very hour of the night. But let us return to the things which are to be said of Simon.

[11] But when Simon had scarcely rested a little in his own land, A marriage offered with the daughter behold, the most powerful king of the English, William by name, who had reared him, sent word to come to him with speed, adding also that he should not take rest in castle or village save for a single night's repose: and that he should by no means betroth to himself the wife due to him, until he should come in haste to Normandy for a conference with him. Then he, fearing the king's edict, without any delay determined to go where he had appointed. Seeing therefore this man coming to him, the king is made glad, and calling him in secret says: Since I have long known by experience your fidelity and love, and desiring to increase my fostering, which is in you, passing over the envoys of Alfonso [p], king of the Spains, and of Robert [q], prince of Apulia, who long conversed with me to ask for my daughter, I have chosen you, giving her to you as wife; I have adopted you as a Son to my inheritance [*]. My delights shall be reckoned yours, my friends shall be yours, and my enemies likewise.

[12] of the king of England, To this the blessed Man, believing this prosperity to be of the devil, who surrounds the hearts of the elect with many snares, although reckoning it in his heart as nothing and empty, yet returning thanks in a most humble voice, said: Great and manifest is [] the benefit which you bestowed upon my boyhood; but I render you thanks for promising much better things. Your dignity, as it is written, descends in humility that it may be exalted; my humility, unless it be continually subjected to you in giving of thanks, deserves to fall the lower. But an obstacle is set before us [] which is very doubtful and grave, and seems to bring a scruple to my thought. For my lady the queen, namely your wife [r], and I (as is said) are joined by kindred and by nearness of family. Wherefore it must be inquired of the wise whether it can in any way be done, and by what reason.

[13] happily avoided by the Saint. To this the king: If by the ancients and elders of our people the kindred is truly proved, it is necessary to assemble and to search out bishops, abbots and clerics, prudent men, knowing the law and wise in high things, whether by bounty of alms, by the building of monasteries, or by any other fitting means it can be arranged. But Simon, always placing his hope in the Lord, said: There still remains another thing, if only your will be present, which is necessary and salutary. For I wish, if it please you, to go to Rome and to seek the counsel and help of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of the lord Apostolic on this matter, so that, spiritual leave being received, whatever is to be done by us in these things may be carried out with confidence. To whom the king, giving his assent, answered: Whatever in this matter seems good to you, with God's favour and with my will, arrange it: and these things said, they departed together.

ANNOTATIONS.

a. Of

his father's and his mother's illustrious family we have discoursed in §§4 and 5 of the Commentary, and of those whom the biographer does not mention — of Walterius or Walter his elder brother in §§4 and 7, and in the same §4 and §8 of his two sisters. Of these too Mabillon treats in his preliminary Observations on the Life; but less correctly about their marriages, when he says: The name of Ralph's younger daughter is unknown; but they relate that the elder was called Adela, who after the death of her former husband, namely Theobald, count of Champagne, married Heribert IV … count of Vermandois. For from the charter which Mabillon himself cites, and which we inserted in §7 of the Commentary, it is established that one of the daughters was married to count Heribert, the other to Bartholomew, lord of Broyes, when their brother Walter died, that is, in the year 1065 according to Chifflet, or 1068 according to Bouchet. But count Theobald was still living in the year 1076, as is clear from his own Charter, which we gave at number 113. And so it must rather be said that Theobald married the widow of one or the other, namely of Heribert or of Bartholomew — nay, of Bartholomew, as Bouchet lays down and Chifflet proves at length, and as can be sufficiently drawn out from what was said in the Commentary about Hugh Bardulf, Bartholomew's son. The same Mabillon in volume 5 of the Annals, page 467, adding another opinion to that already reported, conjectures that one of Ralph's daughters, St. Simon's sisters, is the same as Elisabeth, commonly Rosa, first a nun in the monastery of Chelles in the district of Paris, then foundress of the nunnery of Rozoy near Courtenay, who, as he asserts, a holy virgin, after working very many miracles, passed to heaven on the Ides of December about the year MCXXX. This question Chifflet discussed before in chapter 6 of his Observations; but it seemed to him more likely that St. Elisabeth or Rosa flourished only in the 13th century. The same seemed so to Chastelain in the universal Martyrology, where, announcing the Saint at the 13th day of December, he marks the XIII century in the margin. These things will be able to be declared more fully when that day is reached.

p. That is, Alphonsus: I gave Chifflet's remark on the spelling of this word in the Commentary at number 127.

q. Namely Guiscard, about whom again below.

r. Matilda, daughter of Baldwin of Lille, count of Flanders, about whose consanguinity with the Saint and the other matters pertaining hither we have said more in § XI of the Commentary.

others, morderetur*

others, belli*

others, etiam*

others, ecquis*

others, quo*

others, consulit*

others, donavit*

others, erat*

others, mensa*

others, visere*

others, foret*

others, percepta*

others, depositione*

others, sanctimonialem*

others, ipsis*

others, hæreditatis meæ elegi, te*

others, esse*

others, opponitur*

PART II.

He becomes a monk and has many imitators; Then, all the things which seemed to be prepared being disposed in order for the journey, leaving his house, forsaking the delights whose abundance so flowed upon him that almost, after the king, no one in the whole region seemed richer or more opulent in goods, when he ought to have gone to Rome, devoting himself as a monk, he determined to go to St. Eugendus [a]. And when he had arrived there, certain most noble men of his household being joined to him, all together with joy received the habit of the religion of the holy Trinity ^b. For when formerly, still placed in the world, he was held by the force of fevers [], blessed Arnulf and St. Eugendus himself, and another whose name and face he did not know, appeared to him as he slept in a garden, admonishing him to go thither and, warring for God [] there, remaining, to be ordained and to be a monk under an abbot. And he, rising at once from his little bed, recovered from his infirmity and cried with a loud voice, saying: I am well; and those three lords who were here, where are they, and whither have they gone? But those of his household who had been present, not knowing what he meant, declared that they did not know. Therefore in Flanders, Normandy and the other parts of the Gauls as far as the borders of Germany, the report of so great a Man being received, they were filled with astonishment and wondered; since he was known to those regions, beloved of God and so dear to all, that Hugh, duke of Burgundy ^c, and the count of Mâcon and very many of the same rank, inflamed with the affection of piety and with the sweetness of his love, laid down their arms and left the world []. For who, by his example, would not deeply desire a conversion of manners and change his purpose of life for the better? Nobles alike and commoners, on hearing his name, imitated him []. Now let us return to the things which he accomplished as a monk.

[15] This is Simon the obedient, but not that first one. He, that he might be the heir of his own name, zeal for prayer; austerity of life, is never said to have resisted by disobedience. But when he had taken the monastic [] garment, placing his bed in the sacristy of the church, rising from his little bed in the silent night, he gave himself alone to prayer in the oratory. In fastings he was so mighty that at that time, when through the want which grievously afflicted that region wheat for making bread was lacking even for his use, he received at his refection dry oaten bread gladly and [] giving thanks. And when, by the bending of his knees and the affliction of fastings, an infirmity which had violently attacked him had made his legs swollen and as it were numb, so that he scarcely felt the burning of fire though he seemed to suffer it, his abbot begged him in a most humble voice that for the sake of relief [*] he would take off his hose. But he, gentle as he was in speech, humbly refusing, answered that he was suffering but little and could easily bear it. But on the following night, by the Lord's favour, without his knowledge or that of the rest, his hose were taken off. And when, as usual, he had risen in the morning to go to Matins, and felt his legs and did not find the hose on them, wondering at what had happened, he found them folded before him on his little bed: and taking them again, he put them on as he had been accustomed.

[16] a wonderful vision; his humility; There is another thing too worthy of memory, which the Lord deigned to show to his Servant. For on a certain night, before the brethren had gone forth to the office of their due service, he, going before the others, enters the church to pray before the Lord's altar: and while he persisted in prayer, raising his head upward, he beholds the windows of the church flashing with the splendour of light, and three men of most reverend habit entering the church and hastening into the presbytery, of whom one was like a priest, another bore the appearance of a deacon, and the third of a subdeacon: where over the holy altar, while the Man of God looked on, they most devoutly celebrated as it were the solemnities of Mass. And when the last prayer was ended, he who seemed the priest, blessing Simon, vanished from his eyes together with his companions: which, making his confession as is the custom, he did not conceal from his abbot, requiring of him that, as long as he remained in this life, he should utterly disclose it to no man. But the abbot, seeing the Man of God tending [] to advancement and little by little embracing many virtues which are of God, ordered him to go up and sit in a higher place of the chapter than that [] at which he had entered; which, bearing it very sadly, he begged mercy with a multiplying of petitions for pardon: and this went on until he deserved to be recalled to his former seat.

[17] Weighing therefore the honour paid him by the brethren, his withdrawal into the desert, and his manner of living and fearing lest the affliction of his fastings, or any other things necessary for the soul, should seem to anyone in the community troublesome and vexatious, he desired the solitude of the desert. Whence, going to the father of the monastery, he begs with no small entreaty that leave be given him to go thither, and obtained it. Which being received, taking with him a few of the brethren whose life excelled in religiousness, he withdraws with humility ^d. What he did there on his arrival in the way of work, and how much he endured for the name of Christ, must be made known, that it may become an example to those who hear. For he began, in order that he might live by his own hands, to cut with an axe where new ground might be cleared. His food was scanty, bread with water, pulse and wild apples, with heavy labour, and this once a day, except on Sunday and a solemn day; and the things which he had brought together at home he cooked himself, carrying water on his neck, boiling apples with pottage: and when he went out to do any work, if any poor man ran up and asked alms [] there [], he had charged his steward that he should by no means go away empty.

[18] Now it happened that one day a hungry traveller

asked there for an agape ^e; his rule; benefits and the servant offered him the pound of bread which alone remained. Then the Man of God, returning [*] from the wood with the brethren, asks whether they could be refreshed. To whom the attendant said: Bread is lacking, but there are wild apples; what was left over in the evening I gave as bread to a needy man. At once, glad and giving thanks to God and blessing the brother who had done it, he entered the church and applied himself to prayer. He had not yet finished the words of his prayer, and behold, a certain man came laden with loaves and handed them to the steward in Simon's name. And he, summoning the Man of God with his companions, told him what had happened, and how the Lord had not forgotten his servants. And they, astounded at such a deed, attributing this to the faith of the Man of God, praised God together, taking food at their refection.

[19] Again in the wood, on which almost no time was left free, received from God; he puts on an iron garment; as he was cutting wood, the iron, struck off from the tree, dealt a wound to his foot and made him grievously afflicted, so that returning home [] he was supported on others' shoulders. At which the brethren, greatly saddened, suggest that he ought to be sent to a physician. But he, refusing, answered that, apart from God's medicine, he would by no means be healed []: and yet, by God's providence, he was soon restored to his former health. About the same time a certain religious man, hearing the fame of so great a Man, clothed in an iron garment upon his bare flesh, came to him from afar for the sake of seeing him: who, coming devoutly, was more devoutly received by him; whom, after addressing him more privately, and learning — I know not by whose telling — that he was so clad, he earnestly entreats that that penitential garment be given him. And he, yielding to his prayers, though unwillingly, left it and departed. But Simon, having with difficulty obtained [] leave from the abbot, cast aside the hair-shirt which he used and clothed his tender body in that harder one, for many days afflicting his half-dead carcase: which, stained with rust, worn by the beating of the nails, he made so livid and torn that anyone who saw it would declare that it seemed able even to soften [] a heart of stone into pious weeping.

[20] [sent to the king of France, he is present at the translation of the sacred shroud:] But at the same time, at the request of Hugh of good memory, abbot of the Cluniacs, that the blessed Man himself, going into France, should on his behalf address and rebuke Philip, king of the Franks, who was taking away certain things from him, he set out for France at his abbot's command. Now it happened, as he was setting out, at Compiègne, a town of the king ^f, that [] the Lord's shroud had to be raised and laid more becomingly in a golden chest ^g. Hearing which, the Man of the Lord turned aside a little from the road which seemed straighter, to go thither, and in a short time, the Lord [] leading him, arrived. And, entering the church of blessed Cornelius ^h as if secretly to pray, he is at once recognized by certain persons who were present at the festival, and soon, the report flying about, the rumour is taken up in the ears of the crowd. The voice of the people and the shout of the rejoicing throng is raised, Simon is cried by almost all, Simon is gazed upon in rivalry, and so he is with difficulty withdrawn, the crowd pressing, as far as the king's palace. Whom the king, who had lately arrived, gazing upon most attentively, received with fully due honour, and, addressing him kindly, most willingly promised that he was prepared [*] to comply if he should ask anything of him. But he, not unmindful of his petition, made known what he was seeking for himself, and obtained it as he had asked ⁱ.

[21] He visits the king and queen of England; he refuses gifts; On the morrow therefore, the solemnity being over and the Lord's relics beheld, he hastened as far as Normandy for the sake of visiting the king and queen of the English, who had reared him: and arriving there, he found the king fighting against his son, named Robert. And having compassion on both, peace being restored, he drove the evil of pestilence from the region ^k. But when his fame was heard, those who in the world were called his, and very many others, almost a thousand knights, came joyfully to meet him at his coming, and each most devoutly besought him to accept from his own goods gold or silver, a mule or a palfrey. But he, outwardly giving thanks, inwardly reckoning it as nothing, accepting absolutely nothing, beholds all these things as from the opposite side. But at last, going privately to the king and queen, he made them at once sorrowful and joyful through piety. So much so that the queen, as is the manner of good women, could not speak, weeping breaking off her words. After their sweet conversations, therefore, they offer him relics, gold, silver and the other little gifts of that kind, earnestly entreating that he would kindly receive them; but he, setting all these at nought except the relics, gave no assent to receiving them. Yet without his knowing it, those who had been his companions, secretly taking certain excellent gifts, carried them away. And so, farewell being given and received, he purposes to return to the monastery. O wonderful dispensation of God! Which of men is said in these times to have deserved so great a gift of love bestowed [*] by men? Known and unknown alike loved Simon, rejoiced to behold Simon. This is to be believed to have come about not by chance but by God's dispensation.

[22] Behold, there comes to memory the good of his wonderful patience, he forbids vengeance for an injury done. which he endured on the same journey, compelled by necessity. For when at the castle of La Ferté ^l, which was once called his own inheritance, he was staying on his own lands, a certain friend coming to him from the village, kindled with the desire of seeing him, was suddenly set upon by one of those who are called robbers, who leapt out, seized and carried him off, and departed. When the knights and noble men noticed this, taking it very ill, they sought him, and he was found. They threatened to tear out his eyes or otherwise [*] to do justice upon him. But the Man of the Lord, keeping in his heart innocence and that which is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord," altogether forbade it to be done. Then one of his companions, calling him aside privately, addresses him, wishing to know how and in what spirit he bore that injury inflicted: whether he felt the disgrace inflicted by someone upon his own land; he answered that he was rather glad and gave thanks to God; because in patience we shall save our souls.

[23] Having accomplished on the journey the things that were to be done, he is summoned to Rome by Pope Gregory VII, returning to the desert he began again what he had before purposed, and there, so far as was permitted, applying himself to bodily labour, he rested in humility. But lest a city set upon a hill and a light should lie hid in darkness, the said Prelate of the holy Roman See, hearing the name of so great a Man, notified his abbot by letters that he should be sent to him. But he, moved with grief at the report of so great an evil, is said to have hidden the seal and not to have made it known, lest others should be troubled; until the lord Pope sent another which carried harsher things. For a second time he issued an edict by letters that, unless he should be quick in sending Simon with all speed, the abbot and the whole congregation should cease from the spiritual office. What more? The abbot is troubled, the brethren likewise saddened; what else could they do? For the solace of the church is lost. The journey therefore being arranged, in the things which seemed to be prepared, Simon together with his companions is directed to the City: and when the Lord Apostolic learned of his coming and beheld him with his eyes as he drew near, he is made glad, receiving him with fully due honour. To whom, when he had addressed him kindly, he gave the kiss of peace, and a house fit for dwelling is chosen beside the church of the blessed virgin Thecla ^m. And while he lived there most holily and gave himself to prayer, the whole company of his servants was taken away by death on account of the unhealthiness of the place: only two monks being left, of whom one returned to the monastery, but the other, serving him until the end of his life, endured with him the unevenness of the City.

[24] It happened at the same time that the lord Pope and a certain Robert, prince of Apulia, were at variance with one another. and he reconciles Robert, prince of Apulia, to him. Whence the Prelate, fearing lest the city should in some way be disturbed by the strife of war, summoned Simon, earnestly beseeching that he would set out thither for the sake of making peace ⁿ. And he, at once obeying and promising that he would set out, with a most religious man joined to him, takes the road [] with the blessing of him who bade him. Arriving therefore there, he seeks and finds the prince, whom, when found [], he refreshed as with a banquet by his very look. Whence, restoring peace, he carried into effect what he wished. All things therefore being pacified there, he returns, and on the journey, addressing many [], he admonished them to turn to God: and giving their assent to his address, almost sixty knights, laying aside worldly arms, took up the Lord's arms, and so by the preaching of the Man of God took the monastic [] habit with a blessing [*] in different places of the province. Returning therefore to the City, he went to the Pontiff and related all that he had done about the peace: and he both held dear what he received and approved what he had done.

[25] he dies at Rome, Not long after, having it in his will to return to the monastery, he humbly begs leave of him. And he, lending an ear to his prayers neither the first nor the second time, is said to have given this answer: As you came here summoned neither by my merits, most Beloved, nor by my rule but by the pastoral lordship of the lord Peter, so neither is the permission to return in my power. Go therefore and enter the oratory of blessed Peter, and search out what he may have of will []. And he on the following night, as the other had commanded, enters the church to pray, spending the whole night awake, intent on prayer: and [] before he came forth thence, he is seized with the infirmity of death, by which he was taken from life. Presently going thence to his lodging and falling upon his bed, he invites the Pontiff to hear his confession and to visit him. And he, obeying his will, both absolved him when cleansed from his faults and, blessing him at the same time, departed. And not long after, strengthened by the safeguard of the precious Body and Blood of Christ, on the day before the Kalends of October ^o he rendered his spirit to God: and what he had been in life in religion, his most holy end showed at his taking up.

[26] and is laid among the supreme Pontiffs in an honourable Behold, the whole city is shaken with the report, a people of both sexes and every age is roused for the funeral, and the service which they had less rendered him living is ministered by them to his funeral. Then at the Bishop's command a place of burial is prepared among the Apostolic ones: and because he strove to imitate the apostolic life, he deservedly obtained the dignity of this summit. The Prelate however was not present, being detained by infirmity; but calling together all the clergy he directs thither bishops, abbots, clerics and nuns with tapers and lights, so that the number of thirty-five congregations with throngs of peoples ministered the service to his funeral, and so with the solemnities of Masses and with singular celebrity [*] the body, carried by the princes of Rome, is laid in the grave.

[27] tomb. But a not inconsiderable sum of pence, bestowed by the Prelate, is distributed to the poor. Behold, the Servant of God, without money and without any kindred, a little before poor, is at his end made rich: but he is made richer still when he is placed in a heavenly seat. But the queen of the English, Matilda by name, rich and most powerful, because she had reared him and was said to be nearest to him in consanguinity, for the memory of the Man of God, to arrange his burial at Rome [*],

sent a very great deal of gold and silver by a monk. Which tomb, carefully inlaid with squared and polished stones of marble of various colours, set in the open, still offers examples of goodness to pilgrims.

[28] He appears to his companion But the monk who, having long lived with Simon, had endured many bodily discomforts for love of him, after his taking up and after the arranging of his burial, leaving Rome, revisited the monastery: where for many days, giving his effort to abstinence and labour, he showed to all examples of the highest humility. But before he had drawn near to death, which is the departure from life, Simon, not unmindful of the kindness and service bestowed on him, appeared one night to him as he rested with the others, calling him and saying: Robert [p] — for so he was called. And he said: Who are you? Then Simon answering said: I am Simon. And he added: Why did you once wish to do this to me? For when at Rome you were transferring my body to a new place of burial, you gave nothing to the poor for my soul. To whom Robert said: I was poor, and money was wanting to me. He on the contrary: It is certain that you had something which you ought to have imparted; and, as he himself afterwards related, he had two gold pieces.

[29] To whom again Robert: My most beloved, and orders certain things to be told to St. Anselm tell me, if it please you, what glory, what rest awaits you. My rest, he said, and my glory is great. For my Lord has given me rest among the Apostles and a glorious seat. But he: And what is the joy, what the song before the Lord? I ask you, if you can, to declare it. It is a great joy, he said, and incomprehensible, and can neither be told in words nor conceived by sense: yet if you had parchment, pen and ink at hand, I would certainly have rendered you something of it in writing. And he added: I wish you to announce on our behalf to Anselm, abbot of holy Mary of Bec [q], a prudent and most reverend man, that [*] he gave me little help in God: for I reckoned that in him there was no small faith and love towards the salvation of my soul. These things said, strengthening him to service and salutary obedience, he disappeared.

[30] But the brother related what he had heard to the blessed man, as had been commanded. afterwards bishop of Canterbury. To whom the abbot, weeping, answered, saying: Believe me, brother, believe me, the Servant of God has spoken true things: for, my sins requiring it, I put off, laziness holding me back, what I ought to have done. But if by praying, by giving alms, or by doing anything else that may please God, I may make amends, in every way I long that he may have a part in these things. And these things said, they departed together. This is that most religious man Anselm, who from abbot of Canterbury was made archbishop, and obtained the dignity of the Apostolic legation in England [r]. These things and the others which have been written about Simon, those who, being of his own household in the world, most religious men, received the spiritual habit with him, have testified to be so as we have written, as they beheld them with their eyes and heard them with their ears [s].

Renewing the deeds of the Father of old at the dictation of a brother [t], A disciple by rule [*] I have written under a poor form. But because God has not despised [*] these things nor poorer ones, Moses showed lesser things by taking up the work. Wherefore, desiring the reader as a helper, I beg that he read me, absent and lacking in virtue.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. It is lawful to conjecture that this Robert is that very man of whom John the monk in the Chronicle of Bèze, reporting St. Simon's withdrawal to the monastery of St. Eugendus, says: But with him he brought the lord Robert, etc.; nay, that he is one and the chief of those to whom the biographer appeals as eye- and ear-witnesses of his narratives, namely the Saint's intimates in the world and companions in the religious life. Indeed it does not seem doubtful to me that through the same Robert he learned most of the things which he specially relates about St. Simon's deeds in Italy, about his death at Rome, about his obsequies and tomb: since a little before he sufficiently suggests that Robert, returned from Rome after the Saint's death, long gave the light of a good example to others in the monastery of St. Eugendus.

q. Bec of holy Mary is a famous abbey of the Order of St. Benedict in the diocese of Rouen in Normandy. To it St. Anselm gave himself as a monk in the year 1060, and presided as abbot from the year 1078 until 1093, when he was promoted to the archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury. His Acts have been illustrated in volume 2 of April at the 21st day.

r. St. Anselm died in the year 1109: but from this period some, cited at numbers 22 and following in the preliminary Commentary, conclude that the Life of St. Simon was written about the year 1095: but that this is not so manifest to us we declared in the same place at number 24 and following.

s. On these things certain observations have been made both in the same place at number 21 and following, and here at letter p. Further, in most copies of the Life there followed next the Saint's epitaph, composed by Urban the second, supreme Pontiff; but for the cause alleged at number 158 it has been inserted in the Commentary.

t. Here again there arises the suspicion that the brother at whose dictation the author signifies that he renewed the deeds of the Father, that is, committed the Acts of St. Simon to paper, is no other than the Robert whom we treated of at letter p.

others, in febrim*

others add permaneret*

others, relinquentes*

others, mutabantur & incitabantur*

others, monasticum*

others omit lætus &*

others, leviandi*

others, profectum attendentem*

others omit quam*

others, accurre et, sibi*

others, poscens*

others, rediens*

others, domum*

others, sanari*

others, accepta*

others, molliri*

others omit ut*

others, Deo*

others, paratum*

others, impertutum*

others, severiter*

others, accepit*

others omit inventum*

others, plebes*

others, monachalem*

others, susceperunt*

others add orationibus*

others, ut*

others omit præcipua*

others, Romam*

others, quod*

others, normam*

others, nec spernit*