Adso of Montier-en-Der (attrib.); Levison (ed.), MGH Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum V (1910) — translated into modern British English. The editor’s critical preface is condensed; of the vita itself, the editor printed only the chapters he judged significant — the miracle-chapters and eulogies between were omitted, marked here by dashes as in the source.

Editor’s Preface (condensed) #

The monastery in the suburb of Troyes known as the “Isle of Germania” — founded by Frodobert — was long called “Bobin’s Cell” after the abbot Bobinus who enlarged it, a name it kept into the twelfth century. By the ninth century Frodobert had fallen almost into oblivion: the old church of St Peter, whose origins were ascribed to him, had collapsed of age, and abbot Aldehingus (the tenth abbot) built a new one which Bishop Prudentius of Troyes solemnly dedicated to Peter, Paul, and Andrew on 16 October 850. The many bones resting in the crypt of the former church Prudentius had removed. Under his successor-abbot Bodo miracles appeared; the tomb was laid open on 18 February 872, and Bishop Ottulf raised the bones the next day, translating them into St Peter’s church on 8 January 873 — henceforth Frodobert’s feast, since 1 January, his supposed obit, conflicted with the Circumcision. Charles the Bald named “the monastery of St Peter and St Frodobert” in 877.

The life we have was written some three hundred years after the saint’s death — probably by Adso of Montier-en-Der, who had learnt his letters at Luxeuil and wrote the Lives of Bercharius, Waldebert, Basolus, and Mansuetus; the Miracles of Bercharius attribute the Frodobert life to him, the style and verse prologue match, and in one codex it stands between his two certain works. It was commissioned, perhaps, by abbot Odo of La-Celle. It falls into two parts: the life proper (ch. 1–24) and posthumous events (ch. 25–36) — the dedication of 850 and the elevation of 872/3. Adso’s one surviving source of the best class is the charter of Chlothar III confirming Chlodovech II’s gift; he also had the now-lost “testaments” of Frodobert’s gifts and purchases, an episcopal wish of Troyes, and monastery charters. His “eyewitness” testimonies — “as he himself afterwards related” — are the common device of later authors and are attached to trifling matters. He attributed a short Life to Frodobert’s disciple Lupelmus, but no trace of an older source shows: the grave and wholly credible matter other authors missed is absent. That he makes Ragnegisilus of Troyes, Bertoald of Langres, and abbot Waldebert of Luxeuil contemporaries shows a writer versed in seventh-century history — he himself wrote Waldebert’s miracles — and their names stand in Burgundofaro’s famous privilege. But most miracles are worthless, the praises fit any saint, the tale of the saint’s stupendous simplicity (taking a millstone for a “circinus”) is absurd, and the doubled Walbert — abbot of Luxeuil under whom Frodobert lived, and the illustrious man who helped with the tomb — plus the consonant-named successor Waldinus, and the Gibitrudis borrowed from Jonas, and the abbot Leo who fits a ninth-century abbot of the region all cast suspicion on the first part. Bishop Prudentius, called to dedicate the new basilica in 850, had neither read Frodobert’s life nor found it anywhere extant; returning to the city he learnt the miracles “from the cycle of his deeds”, sent clergy to repair the saint’s injury, and was prevented by premature death (861) from an honourable translation. The older poet who celebrated the 872 elevation in verse names abbot Bodo and tells of a “book of his virtues” which a brother read aloud at the vigil. The second part agrees well with that poem and with the notice added to Ado’s Martyrology.

The miracles and praises are not reprinted here; for the better part, manuscripts used: Troyes 7 (twelfth century, alone with the verse prologue), Vatican Reg. 542, Paris 11759 (with other Adso works), plus the lost codices of Camuzat and Pithoeus. Earlier editions: Pithoeus’s fragments (1609), Camuzat (1610, complete), Du Chesne (part), Bollandus (1643), Mabillon (1669, with the verse prologue from the Val-de-Lumière codex), Bouquet, Migne PL 137.

Verse Prologue #

You who would weigh great things in few words — lo, in a little book you can see great ones. If it please you to scan the ancient records, may this work of newness please for its matter. The brave deeds of great men are sung; we here sing your riches, Frodobert. You who from your first years, given to learning, had steeped your tender soul with dewy moisture; then at Luxeuil, subject to the honourable life, you did take on religion’s help through loving faith; soon returning to the city of Troyes, full of heavenly gifts and proved in goodness, spreading abroad the bright teachings of the divine rule to profit many men. Then the Cell pleased you — a dwelling of narrow bounds, wherein was a faithful station, enclosed. O how manifold the labours that enclosure gave, while you alone do hold converse with the starry pole! But the more the mind was straitened, the wider grew its destined triumphs: a tiny wall then held your limbs in the cave — now the ample spaces of the great pole hold your spirit. Your work grew under holy Bobin’s presidency, prelate to be magnified for your merits: through your counsels the blessed Frodobert now holds the high summits of his church. This noble work we see — you do found it with gathered stones and raise its high roofs, wherein the cohorts stand firm under everlasting praise, the monastic glory the High-throned rules; wherein too stand the thousand prizes of the numerous palm this hall shall confer on its deserving. Here sight returns to the sad brow, here the grave hosts of sickness fell; the lame man takes his step, his joints’ knots loosed, and earth granted the ways denied him. The demon’s wonted fury here collapses and ceases — limbs return to their right mind. Those whom the narrow straits of rising evils press, here the causes of body and soul flow back. If anyone’s guilt of crimes has borne him down and he here seeks pardon, hence he bore back health. This book holds rewards of countless good things, wondrous powers and feasts; whoever would recount them — a thousand remain the page has kept silent and this book does not sing. For if anyone would compass all the holy deeds in books, the day would fail, outlasted, though it never ended. Let few things make faith: he who is unbelieving and doubting of these short words will grasp no better. Now may your everlasting praises remain through the ages, O Frodobert — and have pity on your flock! The heavenly kingdom holds you amid long joys: grant at last that we too may hold the pole with you.

Here ends the prologue.

The Life of St Frodobert #

¹ There was a man of most venerable life, of excellent and precious memory, Frodobert — whom the land of Troyes, blessed by God, brought forth a citizen of singular faith and uprightness: born of middling parents but brightest with an incomparable splendour of mind. From the very dawn of tender age he was marked a vessel of election, acting the spiritual and most perfect man in an infant’s breast, making good the scantness of years with the gift of holiness and grace. In the sequence of the times, he is found to have flourished under Chlodovech, king of the Franks and Dagobert’s son, and under Chlothar the younger, that same Chlodovech’s son — a precious priest and eminent abbot — while Bishop Ragnegisilus ministered in the apostolic office at Troyes. Ragnegisilus was an Aquitanian by birth, seventeenth bishop of that city; he built the basilica of the virgin St Savina on his own estate, making the church over which he presided its heir, and lies honourably buried in it. The blessed Frodobert lived under five bishops of his city down to Abbo, the twenty-first.

² To return to the course of events: as soon as age permitted, he was committed by his parents’ zeal to the school of the aforementioned Bishop Ragnegisilus…

³ …from where, as he himself afterwards related, while he was attending school to learn the psalter, the devil often thrust himself upon his sight, shaking the boy’s naturally timid soul with great menaces and terror. But the boy of divine wit, not ignorant of the demonic deceit and craft, armed his forehead no less than his breast with the shield of the saving sign, and calling on God for help manfully trod down the enemy’s cunning assaults…

⁵ Thereupon the aforementioned bishop, seeing the excellent purity of the youth’s soul and the lofty efficacy of his virtue, bound him to the divine ministries in the office of the clergy. Afterwards, moved by charity’s zeal and desire of spiritual gain, he resolved to set out for the monastery of Luxeuil — that, drawn by the imitation of religious men, he might himself grow in virtues and bring back to his own region the brightest examples of holiness and perfection. Walbert the abbot then ruled that monastery, a man renowned for religion and famed for holiness. When Frodobert arrived by the bishop’s command, the holy fathers of the place received him with glad rejoicing and reckoned him into the congregation’s company. His candour of soul and remarkable simplicity soon became known to all: they wondered in the youth at his rare humility, incomparable abstinence, singular patience, and that, ever intent on heavenly desires, he lived an angelic life among men. The monastery of Luxeuil was at that time wellnigh unique in Gaul both for the height of its religion and the perfection of its learning; so many who burned to advance in either flocked to that place with rival zeal.

⁶ While the blessed Frodobert stayed there, the apostolic man Bertoald, bishop of Langres, sent one Theudolenus, abbot of the monastery of St Seine, there for instruction. To his lodging blessed Frodobert often resorted — as young men are accustomed to seek more eagerly the friendship of their peers. Theudolenus, discovering so great a purity of soul in the man of God, was moved by a wanton curiosity and began sedulously to test whether that simplicity flowed from a fount of inner purity, or whether, as is common with some, a feigned innocence cloaked a deceitful mind. For this he was often wearied with silly jests, both by Theudolenus and by certain brethren of the place — yet he contradicted none, hurt none, nor returned hurt when hurt. For he had ordered his life to overcome injuries with patience, ever repeating the word of David: “I am become as a beast before You.” So he always preferred unfashioned simplicity to worldly cunning, choosing to be a fool to the world that he might be wise in God.

⁷ One day, when he had come to the lodging of the aforementioned Theudolenus, the latter — for sport and by way of test — asked him to go to a certain brother’s cell in the monastery and bring him the “circinus” (compass), saying he needed it for writing. Frodobert ran at once and reached the appointed brother, who — knowing both his simplicity and the jest for which he was sent — hung the middle stone of a mill about his neck and earnestly bade him carry it to Theudolenus’s lodging as fast as possible. He took up the burden unhesitatingly and bore it patiently, though the stone’s weight so bowed him that he could scarce move a step at a time. Meanwhile he met the most reverend abbot Walbert, to whom some brethren had already reported it. Seeing Christ’s meekest sheep laden with the unjust load, the venerable abbot groaned deeply, grieving both for the man’s affliction and for the others’ frivolity. He sharply bade him cast the burden from his shoulders and enquired diligently why he wearied himself so. The man of utter innocence declared that what he bore was needful for writing — that it was the “circinus” he was carrying at Theudolenus’s command from a brother’s cell; for being wholly without cunning, he did not know what a circinus was, and thought it was simply the thing hung about his neck. Then the abbot, seeing the man’s utterly simple mind, burst into tears of pity; and calling those who had dared to weary the holy man with such cruelty, he rebuked them more severely than usual and imposed due penance for the deed’s rashness. They being thus corrected, the rest thereafter refrained from injuring the saint…

⁸ Many years later he returned to Troyes with certain brethren, to see his bishop at his own desire and to visit his parents. After staying some days with the bishop of his city, he asked leave to return from which he had come. But the bishop, in wiser counsel, judged it not right to let so great a man go, and held him by forceful authority. When Lent came, he shut himself in a more secret cell and began to confine himself with the keenest fasts amid unceasing prayer and vigils — for though he was ever strong in incomparable abstinence, in those days he imposed on his body’s enemy a sterner maceration, so that he passed many days together with no food at all…

¹¹ Desiring ardently to avoid the company of men, he often pondered where to place a dwelling suited to his profession and purpose. Though many nobles of the region clung to his holiness most familiarly, he judged it unfitting to ask any of them for a piece of land or estate — having care not for himself only but for posterity, lest the religious brotherhood he wished to gather in the holy habit should suffer any trouble or annoyance from any secular person over its dwelling-place. So, by divine counsel’s guidance, he went to the royal court and obtained by the munificence of Chlodovech, the late illustrious king of the Franks, a marshy spot in Troyes’ suburb called in old custom the Isle of Germania. After Chlodovech’s death he petitioned his son Chlothar in the second year of his reign — the venerable queen Balthild, Chlothar’s mother, consenting — and obtained a privilege of royal authority over the place. This, being kept in our monastery’s archives to this day, we thought superfluous to insert here, since it is at hand for any who wish to read it.

¹² The place was part of the fisc but, as said, overflowing with ancient marshes, gushing with repeated pools, and filled with wild scrub — fit for the haunts of beasts and serpents rather than of men. Strengthened by these royal warrants and, what is greatest, by heavenly aid, he sought out the place’s horrible squalour and, setting to the chief work, rooted out the bushes and drained the pools, preparing a fit space for habitation. There he built a cell and oratory and lived at first solitary with few brethren — given to divine contemplation and ever occupied with angelic exercises.

¹³ The renowned Frodobert then began to enlarge the habitation granted to him and his, conveying to the common stock there all his patrimony’s estates and possessions, and most earnestly acquiring at a price a rich store of servants, handmaids, fields, and vineyards under the testaments still extant. His blessed parents soon granted him the largest portions of their goods and treasures, duly perfected by legal instruments. In process of time the place grew strong with a concourse of religious; enriched by the largesse of nobles flocking there, it enlarged its bounds of property, and the monastic congregation’s increasing numbers made the monastery everywhere noble and famed. Nor must this be passed over: many monks of that place, following blessed Frodobert’s life and teaching, afterwards became bishops at Troyes — among them Aldobert, a man of great wit and eminent holiness, and Bobinus, an Aquitanian — who both conferred great benefits on the place, enlarging it within and without in every possible way, and ending their days in fullness of good works, won a noble burial within the basilica of that monastery. These things disposed, let us resume the course of deeds…

²¹ Meanwhile the day of the Lord’s nativity, most joyous to heaven and earth and to be kept by the whole world, had dawned. Calling two disciples by name — Leo, a most holy man then the mildest of abbots in that suburb, and Lupelmus, who had himself committed to writing the marks of Frodobert’s life and conversation, though more briefly than was just — he sent them with all speed to the most reverend Abbo, then bishop of the city, earnestly begging him to consecrate on the day of the Lord’s birth the oratory he had built in honour of the prince of the apostles in the marsh described. For the congregation of monks had grown by God’s help, and he had built a second church, larger than the first. The bishop, receiving the petition and weighing the matter prudently, excused himself: it could not be done on that day, for care for his clergy and the duties of the feast wholly occupied him, and church custom in no way permitted it. The disciples hastened back and brought the bishop’s answer to the holy father; weighing it diligently and judging it reasonable, he raised his hands to heaven and, his face bathed in tears, said: “May the Lord spare me, and you, sons, forgive me — that thinking the matter through too carelessly, I compelled your brotherhood to labour in vain going and returning.” Yet that the holy mind should not be frustrated in all its desires, divine providence so disposed: his sacred death being deferred, he prolonged his life to the octave-day of the Lord’s nativity — God so following his holiest wishes that on one and the same day the basilica should receive consecration and his sacred body’s clay its burial at the aforementioned bishop’s hands.

²² When the feast of the Lord’s circumcision drew near on the Kalends of January, as Christian observance requires, the holy soul was summoned by pressing sickness to its blessed passing. Yet he did not cease the tongue’s office of holy admonition, untiringly exhorting the disciples who attended him to keep the unbreakable bond of charity among themselves and, persevering in the showing of saving obedience, ever to recall the fear of God before their eyes. As the sun declined to earth’s depths, he bade the aforementioned Lupelmus, who used to minister to him more familiarly, be summoned early. When he was brought in, Frodobert commanded him to read the holy Gospel before him; but Lupelmus was grievously tormented by headache. Yet when he had set his mind — though hardly — to obey the holy commands, as he afterwards related, at the very outset of the reading all the pain departed so that no trace of former pain or trouble remained. Through the whole course of that night, ever intent on God amid spiritual converse, when the hour came for the solemn psalmody and prayers to be completed by the brethren in church, he bade all the disciples be present again; and while the text of the Lord’s Passion was being read before him, the holy soul, stripped of the flesh’s veil, passed into heaven in a blessed death before all their eyes.

²³ When he was thus taken from human company, his most reverend nephew Waldinus — who afterwards succeeded his uncle as abbot in that same monastery — went in haste to the monastery of St Quintin and told the memorable abbess Gibitrudis of the holy man’s death. At once a strange, almost unbearable grief burst into every breast; a part of salvation seemed taken away, such was the father’s absence that followed. As the whole company of nuns broke into weeping and tears, the venerable abbess, moved by heartfelt pity, hastened with utmost speed to the holy man’s obsequies. While the funeral care was being discussed, she asked whether a coffin had been prepared for the body; they answered that a stone monument had been bought from an illustrious man named Walbert — but it in no way fitted the body’s height. For that most holy man was splendid not only in soul but fair of a comely and tall body — as those testify who declare they saw his most sacred body’s bones. Servants were sent at once to bring it; and then a wonder revealed how great was the merit of him for whom the obsequies were prepared. For when Walbert sent some of his household to hand over the purchased sarcophagus to those who came to carry it, by heaven’s disposing mercy such a distraction of mind mocked them that instead of the shorter vessel that had been bought, they pointed out another larger and roomier one which Walbert had prepared for himself — which the bearers set on the wagon and brought with all speed to the place where the holy man had decreed to be buried. So almighty God, who has care of all things, suffered nothing fitting to be lacking even to the ashes of His chosen servant.

²⁴ When all things pertaining to the burial were most elegantly prepared, the aforementioned most reverend bishop, ringed by a company of the suburb’s abbots and of clergy and people, hastened to blessed Frodobert’s obsequies, while his sacred body still lay composed in Christian manner in the cell. First, as reason required, he set about the dedication of the basilica in ecclesiastical order; having completed it with solemn office, he raised the sacred body reverently, carried it into the church, and on that same day of dedication — the Kalends of January — with hymns and praises and all the array of the ecclesiastical office committed it to burial in the basilica he himself had built. So the man of God, most dutifully committed to earth’s bosom, keeps the seventh sabbath with Christ in soul, and awaits untroubled — no, secure of glory — the eighth day promised to our common resurrection: dead in body, yet glorious for ever in living merits.

²⁵ He rested in that basilica for many years’ revolutions, frequented by great crowds flocking from every side and diligently manifested by almost unbroken successions of miracles. Therefore a wondrous fervour toward the saint had kindled all hearts, so that many neighbouring nobles — and no few consecrated women — enriched the place with no small quantity of estates, both to obtain burial there, which all most earnestly desired, and that fitting sustenance should not be wanting to those who served the sacred body, and that those whom the saint’s fame drew from remote regions might be helped with the kindly office of provision.

²⁶ Meanwhile, as the stream of passing time flowed on and iniquity abounded and the charity of many began to grow cold, all that fervour for the saint’s service cooled; the exercise of religion ceased, and the once-frequent miracles began for a time to grow rare. This pernicious neglect came about thus: the fabric of the church he himself had built, in which his sacred body had long been honoured with due offices, gradually collapsed of age and, none upholding it, fell utterly to ruin. While another church was being raised in its place, the blessed confessor’s body remained unmoved and untouched in the crypt of the former basilica. At that time the bishop of the see was Prudentius by name, a Spaniard by birth, most renowned for his ordering of the episcopal life and well instructed in divine things. Summoned by the brethren to consecrate the aforementioned basilica, he enquired carefully whether any bodies of the dead lay buried within the walls to be hallowed; and learning that there were very many, he ordered them all first removed from the church, declaring he would not otherwise undertake the consecration. For the aforementioned bishop did not yet know the blessed Frodobert’s singular brightness of merits, obscured by the times’ negligence — nor had he read his life, full of faith and miracles, nor found it extant anywhere up to that time.

²⁷ When the church’s dedication was done, returning to the city and learning more closely, from the cycle of his deeds, the miracles wrought by the most holy confessor, he first sharply blamed himself for his past ignorance and bitterly reproached himself for treating so great a father’s cause dishonourably; then he sent his archdeacon with a full company of clergy, straitly commanding that the body of the most excellent man be brought back into the church with great reverence. He also fixed a day on which he himself would come to set it with due honour, and decreed that the feast of his sacred translation should be kept henceforth with public ceremony as a perpetual observance. But the weight of an oncoming sickness cheated his holy desire’s fulfilment: overtaken by death soon after, he could not accomplish what he had piously planned.

²⁸ So the matter remained unfinished until the year of the incarnate Word 872 — King Charles’s thirty-second year — when the most religious and venerable Bishop Ottulf, third after Prudentius, was governing the church of Troyes. Placed merely within the basilica’s circuit, the saint was venerated by the brethren of the place with careful devotion, but frequented by no concourse of people, celebrated with no solemn distinction. Yet heaven’s goodness did not suffer that bright star to lie hidden longer in dusky darkness: his merits were to be made manifest to the world and his powerful intercession to help the peoples. At that time the greatness of the divine presence began to show itself to many of the brethren about the place, and to urge the servants of God with portents of frequent visions. Some, occupied in secret night-vigils in the church, heard honey-sweet voices above his tomb as of clerics singing together; others saw certain most splendid lights disposed about the tomb — so that it was plainly shown that where human service was lacking, divine and angelic offices were supplied. A dove of milky whiteness was seen to descend from heaven and, after hovering awhile, to enter the tomb’s recesses. In the stillness of sleep, many saw that same most holy father rising from the sacred mound and presenting himself before the altar of the prince of the apostles for the work of prayer. By these and such wonderful portents it shone clearer than light that the Lord’s precious confessor, ill brooking slothful worship, decreed that a worthier tomb should be prepared for him and the reverence of service more earnestly established. No small weight was added by this too: that upon all who prostrated themselves at the sacred tomb a greater affection of prayer and an abundance of compunction flowed down — and every heart burned insatiably that what the clearest visions suggested of him should be swiftly accomplished, God’s hidden inspiration kindling each breast and urging it with the goads of holy desire to effect so great a business.

²⁹ Animated by such conspicuous prodigies, they went to the venerable Bishop Ottulf and, laying before him the deeds of so great a father, most earnestly besought him to become the co-worker and expediter of the divine will toward the saint. And you might see the Godhead favouring His faithful servants’ prayers in all things: at once the bishop, kindled by the fires of intimate inspiration, took up the business with such ardour that he himself afterwards urged on the abbot and brethren who had petitioned him to hasten the work’s efficacy — exhorting them to persist in untiring prayers, that divine pity, which had made them privy to His will, might grant them to obtain their good desires.

³⁰ For the beginning of so great a work they chose the first day of Lenten abstinence, on which God’s ineffable dignity of pity first declared this miracle to human sight: as the abbot approached with the brethren to lift the paving stones, the stone that had been placed over the sacred monument slid aside of itself, none pushing it, so that you would think it had yielded violently to the pushers’ utmost effort while the rest stood unmoved. All understood it had been thrust back by the sacred body’s power, offering itself unasked to the pious seekers. Pressing on the work more persistently, they came at last to the revered body’s coffin; and as they searched its depths with due care and reverence — to the miracle’s increase — drops of purest gold shone on one of the most holy confessor’s bones, showing most clearly, I believe, that this was a richest treasure, revealed by divine bounty and handled by the faithful’s pious care. That night the sacred pledge remained so, honoured the more sincerely with continual praises and vigils. The morning coming, the bishop had himself brought early; solemn prayer being said, he reverently approached the sacred mound. Then, the brethren intent on psalmody and litanies, he himself with the abbot and priests raised the holy bones reverently and, covering them with precious linen, duly composed them in a clean shrine, which he sealed carefully with his episcopal ring; the accustomed rites being done, he returned home.

³¹ From there, with sleepless care, the composition and adornment of the sacred sepulchre was prepared more carefully; and what miracle heaven’s dispensation deigned to show through the eminent confessor during that delay we must in no wise omit.

A certain man named Ratbert, a native of the Melun district, quarrelled with his mother over the division of the harvest’s gleanings, setting aside the larger sheaves for his own share and leaving the smaller for his mother; she, impatient of the fraud, earnestly warned her son not to provoke God against himself by such deeds. The wretch, inflamed with furious rage, flew at his mother, wound his left arm in her hair, and shamelessly dashed her down before his feet. Divine vengeance attended him at once: that night he was punished with blindness of the left eye, and his arm was afflicted so that he kept tossing it restlessly back and forth — the impatience of the outward member bearing witness to the crime’s conscience; and in aggravation of the vengeance, his senses were withdrawn and he was stricken with unhappy madness. His mother, overcome by the cruelty of it, ended her life three days after in miserable death.

For this most wicked crime he was brought by the local priest to Egilo, archbishop of Sens; by whose command he was imprisoned and endured the gaol’s squalour for three years. Then, as famine grew strong, he was released lest he should die of want.

³² From there he hastened to St Michael’s church at the place long called the Two Mounds; from there he went on to Rome, where Pope Hadrian then governed the apostolic see. When the pope saw him going to St John’s church, called the Lateran, he was astonished at the wondrous portent the wretch bore about for his crime, ordered him summoned, enquired carefully into his case, kindly exhorted him to penance, and commanded him to go back to St Michael’s church and then return to him. Dismissed, he chanced to come into the district of Troyes, where one night he was warned in a dream to carry to the basilica of God’s holy mother and virgin Mary, in the village called Fauchères, a candle of his own length; being too worn by toil and sickness to go himself, he sent it by a messenger. From there he came by chance to the monastery of St Peter, where blessed Frodobert’s precious pledges are venerated. On the Sunday after the Lord’s Ascension, while the priest was performing the public offices as usual and he was praying at the church door, he saw — as he afterwards related — a certain cleric of youthful appearance come to him, seize him violently by the loins, and shake his whole body mightily. Dashed to the ground by the blow, he lay long motionless as though near death; and in that interval he received the quiet of his arm and the integrity of his senses and head. Rising from there, he took a draught of water; overwhelmed by great weariness, he slept again, and saw the same cleric as before earnestly impressing these words: “Hang this garment wherewith you are clothed at Frodobert’s threshold.” He was clad only in a hair-shirt after the penitents’ manner. Troubled at the saying, he protested that he knew not Frodobert’s house and had no other garment; and was roused from sleep by one of the keepers. Anxiously recounting what he had seen, he asked earnestly where Frodobert’s house stood; and learning of the church — before whose doors, as he lay prostrate, his health had been restored — filled with unspeakable gladness he entered it, magnifying Him and rendering thanks through whose benefit he had received both health and relief from his most grievous crime. Laying aside his hair-shirt there, he hastened to the holy archangel Michael’s church as the pope had bidden. A truly wondrous thing, to be told to divine pity’s praise: he was saved by the intercession of one whose very name he had never heard — and as soon as he learnt that name, divinely taught, he felt that he had recovered soul’s and body’s health by his merit! Many benefits besides came to the sick through his merit in those days while the sacred body’s shrine was being prepared — above all to those who, stricken with various fevers, humbly sought blessed Frodobert’s help.

³³ Meanwhile, as time ran on, the Kalends of January dawned — the day on which, as we have said, he was taken from worldly toils and flew up to the heavenly city’s heights. But since that day is specially dedicated to the Lord’s circumcision and suffers no other feast to eclipse it, the blessed Frodobert’s feast kept on those same Kalends seemed the less solemn and renowned, for the people, occupied with the ceremonies of the Lord’s feast, could not freely flock as they wished to the blessed confessor’s joy. The venerable bishop of Troyes, taking counsel with the abbot and brethren, therefore judged it fitting to defer the aforementioned feast to the eighth day from there — providing both for the dignity of the feast and more advisedly for the people’s desire, who already burned insatiably for blessed Frodobert’s glory. So on the sixth day before the Ides of January, the night office being done, they lifted the sacred body on devoted shoulders and carried it to the neighbouring basilica of St Michael — which they decreed so that a fuller concourse of people might come and the devotion of the translation be made the more renowned on the following day. There, matin hymns being celebrated with greater solemnity, brethren were sent by the abbot and the bishop invited — who, kindled with the fervour described, had the clergy and people brought in haste early…

³⁵ So all things being duly provided that so great a day’s service required, the precious body’s clay was raised by the bishop from St Michael’s basilica, hymns raised on high, and borne into the church of the prince of the apostles with such pomp of joy, such thronging of peoples, that it shone clearer than the sun how great was the merit before God of him whose glory blazed so vast among men. In the prepared place that incomparable treasure of the most holy body was laid; the sepulchre’s ornaments being duly disposed, an altar at the head was consecrated in honour of the Innocent martyrs. The sacred rites were performed with solemn offices, and the privilege of his feast was sanctioned by episcopal authority to be kept unchangeably for all ages. The whole day was spent amid every joy, and by these first offices it was marked how zealously posterity should keep it.

³⁶ Enriched therefore with so many benefits through the blessed Frodobert’s merits, we both give and hold thanks and blessings and insatiable gratitude to the almighty Lord, who deigned to prepare for us who serve Him a special patron of our race and our order — who was this place’s founder from the foundations, advanced it by his dwelling, adorned it with his most blessed examples, consecrated it by his most holy death, and who, having shone in life with the gift of signs, being dead — no, happily immortal — gladdens his place by his presence, protects it by his patronage, and adorns it with unfailing miracles. Of all these things the author, guide, and co-worker is the immortal God, whose is perpetual glory, infinite victory, majesty and eternal dignity, henceforth and now and for ever and ever. Amen.